Reducing technical debt Unlock agility by reducing technical debt Tech debt can kill agility, but not all tech debt is bad. Using Elements.cloud helps you to understand the impact of tech debt and prioritize the clean-up effort. Elements provides the analysis that identifies which tech debt is killing agility, the risks and the effort to remove it. Talk to us Not all tech debt is bad Understand risk and manage technical debt Elements gives you visibility of the complexity of every org and help you pinpoint the areas of tech debt that are slowing down project delivery and accurately estimate the effort required to remediate. Assess the impact Categorize technical debt based on impact. Then focus your effort on removing the technical debt that is killing your org’s agility. Estimate effort accurately Use org intelligence to assess the true effort to refactor the debt and build a business case. Eliminate debt safely Understanding the impact of making changes to the org means you can remove debt quickly and safely. Don’t add new debt Understand how to build your org solutions to avoid exacerbating your technical debt. X-ray for your org Automated org analysis The nightly analysis builds metadata dictionaries for every org. Running risk and impact analysis, dependency and field population analytics, it then creates change notifications and automated documentation. The visualization in the dependency tree gives an instant understanding of the scope and impact of any change. Talk to us Get in control Estimate effort to reduce technical debt The org analysis helps estimate the effort to reduce the technical debt. It justifies the extra effort required to clean up technical debt as part of a change, providing the long-term advantages of a cleaner, leaner org. Talk to us Org intelligence Tech debt reduction is a change project Reducing technical debt is a change project that needs to be planned and executed flawlessly. Org intelligence ensures you can make the changes safely, with the lowest effort. You can document changes in the metadata dictionary to help in future technical debt reduction. Documentation can be linked to requirements, process maps, architecture diagrams, user stories or external documents (rich text notes, images, URL links). Talk to us We removed 18 Managed Packages and over 200 custom objects in less than 6 hours. Andrew Russo – Salesforce Architect, BACA Systems Find out more architect.salesforce.com Strategies to reduce technical debt Many organizations are held back by the accumulation of technical debt, which makes it difficult for them to be adaptable and nimble. To tackle this problem, it’s essential to have a full understanding and analysis of the org and prioritize areas with the highest level of technical debt. All team members play a crucial role in managing technical debt by considering it when making design decisions and creating clear documentation. Read our article on what strategies can reduce Technical Debt. Strategies to reduce Technical Debt . Frequently asked questions What Is technical debt in Salesforce? Functionality that is not used, or no longer used is technical debt. What is acceptable technical debt? Technical debt that doesn’t impact system performance or slow down future development is not an issue. Is technical debt a risk? Technical debt slows down future development because it increases the impact assessment of any change, and risks hitting limits such as the maximum fields for an object. What is an example of technical debt? Our research shows that 50% of custom objects are never used. 40% of custom fields are never populated. Time and effort were wasted planning, developing, testing, and deploying these. How do I find technical debt? A metadata dictionary that analyzes usage such as field population and last modified date will identify technical debt. It can also provide the dependency analysis so you can estimate the effort to remove the technical debt. What is the 80:20 rule for tech debt? 80% of development effort should be on new features and 20% should be on tech debt remediation. This 20% should be directed toward the tech debt that is having the greatest impact on Salesforce agility. What are the 4 quadrants of technical debt? The four quadrants of technical debt is a classic 2 x 2 matrix where the axes are how dangerous, and how knowledgeable. So the top right quadrant is “planned where the impact is understood” and bottom left is “didn’t know that I didn’t know” What is the root cause of technical debt? There are 5 reasons for technical debt, and the bottom 3 fit into the 4 Quadrants because they are technical debt that was within the control of the implementation team. Business change: the operational processes have changed so the functionality is no longer used New Salesforce release: functionality that was custom development is now available in the core platform Deliberate: architectural or design decisions were made understanding the impact (top left and right) Incremental: earlier architectural or design decisions are forcing new decisions (top left and right) Accidental: insufficient business analysis, poor architecture/design, or poor knowledge of the platform (bottom left and right). How do I reduce technical debt? You need to take a deliberate approach with time budgeted in each project to reduce technical debt where it has the greatest impact. Rarely is there a business case to launch a “tech debt reduction project”. You need a metadata dictionary to be able to support any tech debt reduction efforts.
