Remediating $40M in Enterprise-Wide Technical Debt
Trexin provided governance and continuous improvement solution delivery for an enterprise-wide Technical Debt Management Office (TDMO) implementation.
Business Driver
Following an enterprise-wide technical debt assessment, the Chief Technology Officer of a large, multi-state health insurance company approached Trexin with a significant and challenging problem to be solved: How to make sense of the daunting mounds of technical debt that had accumulated over time, and how to become better prepared to prevent this from happening again in the future.
Approach
Knowing that resolving existing technical debt requires immediate tactical actions whereas limiting future technical debt requires more extended strategic actions, Trexin addressed our Client’s problem through two distinct but interrelated dimensions:
- the reactive identification, prioritization, and remediation of existing technical debt across the enterprise (near-term + tactical), and
- the proactive awareness, foresight, and prevention of additional technical debt from accumulating to the point of becoming unmanageable (long-term + strategic).
Working with a $50M initial investment, Trexin helped our Client build a formalized program with urgency and focus, beginning with the highest priorities. Part of this investment included a seed fund to ramp up, standardize processes and communications, and operationalize the program. In parallel, we collaborated with our Client to conceptualize and implement a TDMO to provide governance and oversight, remove impediments, and enable product teams to remediate technical debt impacting their areas.
Results
Trexin successfully helped our Client quickly realize $40M in cost savings (offsetting 80% of the initial $50M investment) in enterprise-wide technical debt, including the decommissioning of over 3,000 end-of-life servers and the retirement of over 70 legacy applications, all within our first operational year. Trexin also delivered additional value by implementing a financial credit realization tracking and reporting mechanism, which made a compelling case to the business and further validated our efforts. And by earning the role of a genuinely trusted partner, Trexin was able to help catalyze a change in culture around the perception and prioritization of technical debt.
