Also, beware the proof-of-concept trap. Don’t get bogged down in testing multiple solutions that never see the light of day. Instead of focusing on single use cases, think holistically about how your organization can use AI to drive topline growth and reduce costs. What part of the enterprise architecture do you need to support this, and what part of your IT is creating tech debt and limiting your action on these ambitions?
Present a balanced solution
Here’s where many CIOs stumble: presenting technical debt as a problem that needs to be eliminated. Instead, show how leading companies manage it strategically. Our research reveals that top performers allocate around 15% of their IT budget to debt remediation. This balances debt reduction and prioritizes future strategic innovations, which means committing to continuous updates, upgrades, and management of end-user software, hardware, and associated services. And it translates into an organization that’s stable and innovative.
We also found throwing too much money at tech debt can be counterproductive. Our analysis found a distinct relationship between a company’s digital core maturity and technical debt remediation. Using more of the IT budget to pay down tech debt only improves digital core maturity to a certain point. Beyond this peak, it indicates that a company is over-indexing investments in technical debt and not building its digital core capability effectively and efficiently.
Close with clear choices
