Mining Technical Debt for Fun and Profit
Risk Advisory Alex Muentz Risk Advisory Alex Muentz

Mining Technical Debt for Fun and Profit

That old tech debt gets a hard crust of “don’t go there” and after a while only a few people understand how it actually works. Those few people know the system well enough to develop workarounds to meet new requirements, so you don’t get a mandate to replace it.

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Alex Muentz Alex Muentz

Temporary Workarounds Shouldn’t Last Longer Than Permanent Solutions

You’ve got frustrated users, availability and confidentiality issues. All from a temporary workaround that wasn’t fixed when it was relatively easier. Welcome to technical debt and the interest is accruing. Where non-kludged systems can be patched and upgraded within regular service windows without the entire IT department on call, fixing this monster will require serious planning.  

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Risk Advisory Alex Muentz Risk Advisory Alex Muentz

WannaCry as the Regulatory Brown M&M

If you were under a rock for the last few weeks, WannaCry is one of those cyber-security events that made it into regular news. If it hits NPR, that means everyone who knows me or at least strikes up a conversation at the bar will ask me my opinion.

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Risk Advisory Alex Muentz Risk Advisory Alex Muentz

Compliance as a Cost of Customer Acquisition

If you're like many of our clients, you're in customer acquisition mode. You've spent a bunch of money to build your product or service, and the marginal cost to support a new customer is relatively small. They're buying the same thing everyone else is, so there's some additional load you need to meet.

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