Technical debt, or tech debt as it’s known on the streets, affects all stages of the product lifecycle. When it comes to product adoption, there are some key things to keep in mind as you assess your company’s technical debt and what to do about it.
Tech debt is often unavoidable in the product lifecycle. Whether it’s time-to-market pressures, the continuous changes that SaaS products go through, resource constraints, or one of many other reasons, it’s safe to assume that every product will have some tech debt.
That’s not to say that it can’t be managed properly. In fact, being able to manage tech debt is a very important skill for product managers (as well as other members of the product and eng teams).
Product adoption
There are many ways in which tech debt can affect product adoption. We’ll look at 3 today.
- User experience
- Security issues
- Time-to-market constraints for updates
Poor user experience due to tech debt
Technical debt can be responsible for issues in a web or mobile app like app crashes, bugs, or performance issues. Over time, these issues can make for a disappointing experience. This of course, can lead to churn as users look for other methods to solve their pain points.
Security issues
Today’s users are increasingly aware of the need for strong security in any app they adopt. Whether B2B or B2C, customers want strong security features. If users are concerned about privacy issues, data breaches, or other cyber threats, they are less likely to adopt a product into their lives.
Time-to-market constraints
As tech debt increases, so does the time it takes to address it. In the beginning, it may be possible to ignore issues in the codebase, but as time goes on, they will become unavoidable. Of course, addressing these types of issues will take engineers away from developing new features, which will lengthen the amount of time it takes to get new features out to users. These days, users are getting used to fast production of new features, and they may grow impatient waiting for things like bugs to be sorted out, instead of getting new features launched.
Technical debt is a loan
Technical debt is like a loan. There are concrete short-term benefits to taking on a loan, but over time it’s important to pay back on a timely schedule, otherwise the interest can rise rather high.
With tech debt, you are accepting a trade-off between short-term gains and long-term consequences. It should be done strategically, and with a plan in place to make those updates and “pay offs” as you go.
You’re borrowing against your future time and eng resources, so in that way it’s sort of like a HELOC loan. For startups, it can be crucial to have that debt in the beginning, but it’s equally important to have a plan in place to address it.
It’s possible to prioritize tech debt reduction along with feature development. This can be done by implementing good development practices, like code reviews and automated testing, and allocating time for refactoring and technical debt repayment. By finding a balance between innovation and code quality, product teams can minimize the negative impacts of technical debt on the long-term success of their SaaS products.