Technical Debt Will Strike Back

New Jersey is having difficulty right now processing unemployment claims because the rely on an antiquated COBOL application, and they're looking for help.

We know that COBOL is not a very popular programming language these days, but we keep the COBOL apps around for decades because we're not really making any changes. We conveniently overlook the fact the original app creators are retiring and that COBOL experts are rare.

We've all heard it. We're not making changes so we don't have to worry about it. It's always done that. We have a work around for that. It has issues, but it works for us. Those quirks and workarounds that we tolerate in our day to day activities are technical debt. The impact of technical debt grows over time. That quirk may be a minor annoyance now, but later it could be the quirk that grinds our entire business process to a halt.

I have worked in state IT environments, and funding is always tight for large projects. I wonder how many times upgrading their COBOL-based unemployment processing app has been cut from the budget. Hopefully this will serve as a wake up call for other states and organizations to review their technology stack. Doing nothing is a perfectly valid option in a risk management strategy; however, people must realize and plan for the side effects. Technical debt will strike back. The only unknown is when.