Technology is the life blood of any business operating in the 21st century, managing workflow, delivery, accounting, and communications to name but a few areas that 1’s and 0’s touch. All this does not happen by magic. Someone has to choose, design, and implement all the systems, keep an eye on the needs for today, as well as the needs of tomorrow.

One of your many roles as a CTO is to make sure technology does not inhibit but enables the growth of the company. Sounds easy, doesn’t it? That said, it is very easy to get behind, and before you know it, your department is the bottleneck hindering progress. This is a form of technical debt.

Like the mythical frog we are always keen to be boiling, no one sets out to hold the company back yet it has a way to creep up, only highlighting itself at the most inconvenient times.

Let us have a look at some ways this can happen.

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#1 Ignoring small problems

Small problems or irritations have a habit of becoming much bigger ones if not addressed. This can manifest in a number of different guises, for example, be mindful in and around special processing or workflow actions.

I have seen systems that required a client 3-digit code, and this code was referenced everywhere – all systems were predicated off of this code. You can see where this is going – after 10 years, they started to run out of available codes. The company had created their own Y2K problem with as much headache to rectify.

#2 Not keeping pace with updates

Software doesn’t physically age, yet the environment to which it executes is constantly changing, especially in a very interconnected dependent one. It is imperative to keep systems updated, to the latest release candidates, and this includes kernels, libraries, and drivers. An area that is sometimes overlooked is hardware outside of servers – printers, network routers, TVs, etc.

I had one client that had to keep a Windows XP machine frozen in time, as it was the last machine that had Macromedia Flash installed on it, and that was required to administer the main office router. They had completely overlooked the network equipment, and it had fallen long out of support, and Dell was asking for an obscene amount of money to upgrade it – the Windows XP image was a cheaper band-aid.

#3 Doing too much

Architecting software is hard, and to do it right, you have to be aware of the latest design patterns and facilities available. The enterprise (particularly the cloud) landscape is always evolving, with more areas becoming commodity or utility computing. That is a fancy way of saying it’s no longer a competitive advantage to build/maintain it yourself.

Today, we wouldn’t dream of managing our own web server or even queue systems when the likes of the major cloud providers do this at a fraction of the cost. We’re slowly evolving away from the need to manage servers at all with the advent of serverless computing.

If you don’t keep pace, replacing large chunks of your infrastructure as and when something becomes mature, you will be in a position of managing and supporting large chunks that are not necessary.

#4 Not recognizing human capital

Humans are a very versatile machine adapting quickly to even the most complicated systems and processes. Instead of figuring out how to connect System-A with System-B, we’ll have a human do an export from one, do a quick few things, then import it into System-B. Familiar?

This exists everywhere, even in the most hi-tech of organizations, there will be something somewhere that has a human bridging the gap. While not a problem per se, it does quickly become a bottleneck, both in scale and availability/redundancy. Since the human can do a whole bunch of complicated tasks without effort – you can overlook the real intricacies at play.

#5 Focused on the symptoms not the problem

It is easy to get sucked into solving issues as and when they come in, and if your team can turn them around quickly everyone feels good. Though, what issue did you really solve? Did you figure out how to better wipe a runny nose – instead of figuring out how to stop the nose from running in the first place?

Detecting these situations is hard – especially if people are creating a false sense of urgency. The CTO shouldn’t buckle under pressure – no matter who is shouting at them! An example of seeing this before, was when I got a whole plan presented to take down the file server, so they could upgrade the hard disks, as they were starting to age. The IT manager was focused on keeping hardware updated and in warranty – not once though did he think that it was maybe the time to move to the cloud and remove the dependency (and overhead) of the file server.

#6 Lack of communication with the business

Continual dialogue with the various departments that you are serving is one of the most important things you can do. Keeping pace with their needs and requirements will make sure you are delivering what they need – not what you think they need.

Making assumptions on their needs you maybe going down a path that need not be travelled.

#7 No playtime

We don’t like to call it playtime; the more acceptable term is “Research & Development,” but it boils down to the same thing. Technology is always changing, and you need to allow for times to experiment to see what is possible. It doesn’t have to be all the time, or even have a dedicated time, but time in the schedule should be allocated to this.

The cost of not doing this can hold back your department, and subsequently your organization. By seeing what is possible, you can start simplifying your enterprise and maybe even reduce the cost. Another often overlooked perk of this is the positive impact it can have on your team, building in specific time for them to explore horizons.

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This is by no means an exhaustive list though it should start you thinking about all the areas where, if not attended you can get behind.

When you are in the heat of battle (read pressing deadlines) it is easy to put some of this on the “we’ll get to it to later” list, and as long as you actually get to that list, then all is good.

Never addressing that list, is what will eat away at your departments effectiveness.