Technical Debt is a term used in software development where there is a priority given to speedy delivery over perfect code. Developers can launch software more quickly, but this accumulates issues after release. It is a tool for getting ahead. But at some point, we must pay the debt.
Think of it like financial debt. There is good debt and bad debt when it comes to financial obligations. For example, there are times when we have to take out a loan to buy capital improvements or operating expenses to create or grow a business. In that situation, it is good debt that helps a company get started or get ahead. However, some people get into bad debt where they don’t use the funds to generate cash flow or return on investment.
The “Technical Debt Quadrant”
One of the most popular ways of categorizing debt comes from Martin Fowler’s Technical Debt Quadrant. Martin Fowler was one of the authors of Manifesto for Agile Software Development. He noted there was a difference between intentional and unintentional Technical Debt. Deliberate debt is driven by choice, while inadvertent debt comes after the fact. In this quadrant, prudent TechDebt comes from a knowledgable team, while reckless TechDebt comes from sloppy and inexperienced people. In a financial sense, the prudent team has a high credit score, while the reckless team stacks up bad debt and is not mindful of their credit rating. Prudent TechDebt can be useful at times, but reckless TechDebt can be damaging to an organization.
Technical Debt with clear aligner therapy
Technical Debt can be a trade-off between making something easy in the short term and maintaining it for a long time. Orthodontic practices often need to exchange between solving the immediate, pressing problems and fixing long-term issues. We may implement a new digital system and suffer technical debt when we haven’t invested in the learning curve. Examples of Technical Debt in the orthodontic office could include a high amount of ClinCheck time due to inefficient workflow or increased additional aligner rates due to a lack of updates to the clinical effectiveness of the appliance.
Technical Debt can also be a term used to describe the increased cost of changing or maintaining a system. Although it can certainly be due to shortcuts during its development, we can also incur TechDebt when linked systems are updated. When software and hardware are updated, maintenance is required to update the code. These continual updates can become cost-prohibitive or labor-intensive for software or equipment companies. For example, we need to update software as operating systems and computer systems evolve. So there is upkeep to digital applications when other parts they are linked to change. Examples of this technical debt are maintaining an older practice management system or losing support for an older CBCT machine.
Technical Debt is a concept that is important to understand in today’s orthodontic practice. As we make the digital transformation and integrate more software and hardware into orthodontics, the issues of software updates, poor digital product development, bugs, code, infrastructure, APIs, and service become just a few of the digital challenges we encounter. TechDebt may be something we experience by way of our vendors or through the digital services we provide.
