What is Technical Debt for RPA and Intelligent Automation

When a programmer sacrifices quality to accelerate the coding process, the costs that result from having to rework the code down the line is referred to as “technical debt” or code debt. In other words, this programming concept could be thought of as the inherent consequences of prioritizing speedy delivery over perfect code. Sort of like the interest one might pay on a loan.

In the modern business environment, where most business units (including IT) are highly incentivized to accomplish more with less and as quickly as possible, technical debt can add up fast. In addition, older companies, that have layered systems on top of systems for decades, can find themselves paralyzed by technical debt, unable to incorporate new solutions due to high costs and complexity. 

Layering RPA and Intelligent Automation (IA) onto systems mired with technical debt can have disastrous consequences. Given that RPA does not do well with frequent data, logic and process changes, RPA bots will disintegrate rapidly in complex legacy IT environments. In addition, the round-the-clock maintenance these bots would require to function could even increase technical debt. 

When we asked Bob Kurpershoek, VP Financial Systems & Strategy Group at NBCUniversal Media, how his team confronts this issue, he responded:

“Many older companies have tech debt. That's a given. And it can be hard to compete with newer companies because they don't struggle with this issue as much. 

To break it down, you have a front-end and you have a backend. So the front-end is customer-facing. This is where you make your money. And this is also, probably where you innovate the most. When the back end doesn’t keep up with the front end, you get technical debt. 

It can be like turning an oil tanker. Because you can constantly move on the front-end, but your oil tanker needs to move along with it. So again, the only way you can tackle this, is to rationalize your number of systems and standardize. It's a very old recipe, but it still works because the less you have, the easier it is to steer towards a newer system.

Also, the more enhancements you add to your system, the more difficult it's going to get to upgrade your systems to the latest and greatest that is in the industry. So again, this is where standardization and simplification is very important. It’s not easy but the more you can do it, the easier it is to upgrade your systems. 

Though it may not seem like the logical thing to do in the beginning, it is key to enabling long-term agility and innovation.”

Bob also added that business/IT alignment is key to combating this issue of technical debt.  “often business people come to us with those new technologies. But you should always do a deeper analysis. Does it fit with our overall strategy? Is it adaptable to what we're doing? Is this a redundant system?”

Having a standardized, enterprise-wide strategy for RPA and IA implementation is also key for making smart investments to reduce technical debt rather than increase it. At the Scalable RPA & Intelligent Automation Live virtual event taking place March 30-31, 2020, we’ll be going into this topic in-depth. 

In addition to Bob Kurpershoek, who will be presenting on “Creating A Strategic Alignment Between Business And Technology,” we’ll have dozens of other sharing their approaches to creating and actioning scalable intelligent automation strategies. 

Register now for Scalable RPA & Intelligent Automation Live

Scalable RPA & Intelligent Automation Live

The key for global corporate enterprise is to benefit from the collective intelligence presented by RPA and cognitive technologies along with human workers. Only by having technology combine with human talent can global corporate enterprise achieve scalable intelligent automation. And only with scalable intelligent automation enterprise resiliency be realized.

 

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