Want to tackle technical debt? Sell it as business risk

The “catch” in this is that CFOs and other corporate leaders don’t see aging IT infrastructure as risky and hazardous today — and IT has contributed to this thinking.

How? Through IT’s long history of presenting infrastructure upgrade requests in separate hardware and software line-item budgets, alongside technical justifications — e.g., maxed out processing, end of vendor support, too many users on the network, etc. — that don’t mean much to key financial decision-makers.

Changing the IT infrastructure conversation

Technical budget justifications for IT infrastructure upgrades, which are seldom linked to end business strategies, make it easy for budget decision-makers to defer IT infrastructure investment. Instead, budget decision-makers figure that the company can “make do” because IT will somehow find a way to keep systems running.