EP108 Tackling Tech Debt in E-Commerce - A Framework for Growth === ​[00:00:00] [00:00:00] JOSHUA WARREN: Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of Commerce Today, where we explore strategies, tools, and ideas that you can apply to your e commerce business today. [00:00:14] JOSHUA WARREN: I'm Joshua Warren, the CEO of Creatuity, and, uh, really excited to talk some today about technical debt. So let's actually start with some numbers. [00:00:24] JOSHUA WARREN: So did you know that technical debt costs businesses in the U S a staggering 1. 5 trillion? Yeah. I had to double check that, but it's 1. 5 trillion. Dollars. 91 percent of CIOs say tech debt is their biggest challenge, and 80 percent of organizations admit they have had to delay or cancel a critical project because of technical debt. [00:00:45] JOSHUA WARREN: Um, I read a really interesting analogy that technical debt is like dark matter. One of those things where you, you know, it's there, you can infer its effects, but it can seem hard to measure directly. So technical debt, you can see the product delays, the hidden [00:01:00] costs, the inefficiencies, but it's just lots of times really hard to point to it and say, that's our technical debt. [00:01:05] JOSHUA WARREN: Here's how much it is. [00:01:07] JOSHUA WARREN: so in this episode, I'm actually going to show you how to take control and get past that. I'm going to show you our, um, tech debt scoring framework that we have at creativity. It's a practical tool that we've developed. That really helps e commerce businesses like yours identify, assess, and prioritize their technical debt. [00:01:23] JOSHUA WARREN: It's super simple to use. It's actionable. It's free to download. You're going to love it. Um, also a little bonus. This is actually a sneak peek of what I'm going to be covering at Meet Magento Florida. I'm going to dive even deeper at Meet Magento Florida into solving the challenges of technical debt. [00:01:39] JOSHUA WARREN: And this is a chance for you to hear a little bit about what I'm going to present there. Um, but I'm saving a lot of the, the best stuff for the conference. So definitely encourage you if you haven't yet, um, meet Magento, Florida is the first week in February. Go buy those tickets. You still have time. Um, if you can't attend, stay tuned to my LinkedIn. [00:01:58] JOSHUA WARREN: I'll actually be recording live [00:02:00] episodes of converse today and live streaming from the event. So I'm going to try to. Bring the event to you if you can't make it, but I really encourage you to attend. If you can, [00:02:08] JOSHUA WARREN: let's start with the basics though. What is technical debt? So at its core, technical debt really can be the cost of shortcuts. [00:02:16] JOSHUA WARREN: It can happen when developers skip best practices, when businesses delay upgrades, or when you have to work around limitations to hit deadlines. And over time, those shortcuts add up and they can make your e commerce platform. Harder to scale, harder to maintain, harder to improve. There's really three main types of tech debt. [00:02:34] JOSHUA WARREN: So there's intentional technical debt. So when you consciously say we're going to take shortcuts to save time, we know we can come back and fix that later. Uh, there's accidental tech debt. When there's a lack of knowledge or a change in standards that leads to kind of suboptimal decisions. And then there's also aging or environmental tech debt. [00:02:53] JOSHUA WARREN: So basically when your systems or code become outdated over time. Um, so a few ways that tech [00:03:00] debt can show up in real life. And this is actually some examples from people I've worked with over the years. [00:03:05] JOSHUA WARREN: maybe you're running Magento, but native features like promotions or advanced pricing don't work because another agency didn't implement them well. [00:03:12] JOSHUA WARREN: Maybe certain parts of your site are crashing randomly. Maybe there's a lingering bug on your site where everyone just says, Oh, that's how our site works. And you just kind of work around it. [00:03:22] JOSHUA WARREN: and lots of times when someone on your team says, Oh, that's just how our site works. Uh, that's when you realize, Hey, we've normalized a problem. [00:03:30] JOSHUA WARREN: That's really a sign of deeper technical debt. So it's not just a developer problem or a development issue or a technical issue. It's a business problem. It's impacting revenue, your customer experience, and your ability to compete. [00:03:42] JOSHUA WARREN: so that's what tech debt is. Where do you start fixing it? And this is where I see everyone gets so stuck is trying to figure out how much technical debt do we have? [00:03:51] JOSHUA WARREN: What's our next step? How do we fix it? Where do we go from here? All that fun stuff. It all feels urgent. And when everything is urgent, when [00:04:00] everything is important, then nothing gets done. So how do you decide if you need to say, fix a slow checkout first or address an outdated integration? That is exactly why we've developed Creatuity's Tech Debt Scoring Framework. [00:04:13] JOSHUA WARREN: It's a real simple, practical tool. Um, it will be going live when I present at Meet Magento Florida. So stay tuned, uh, that first week of February. You'll be able to actually come back here and download it. And the way it works is you basically evaluate each issue in your platform using three factors. [00:04:29] JOSHUA WARREN: Urgency, business impact, and complexity. So urgency, is this issue breaking things right now? Does it disrupt transactions or workflows? Business impact, how much does this issue affect your revenue, customer satisfaction, or efficiency? And complexity, how hard is it to fix? Does it require a major rebuild or is it a quick fix? [00:04:47] JOSHUA WARREN: Each factor gets a score one to five. You, um, add all this up. There's a whole formula on the sheet and it helps you see exactly what to prioritize. And it really brings clarity to that process that can often be [00:05:00] overwhelming, especially if you have different teams or different departments that are kind of arguing and jockeying for a position of whose issues are going to be addressed first. [00:05:07] JOSHUA WARREN: This can bring a very practical and very kind of independent view of your technical debt. So let me walk you through briefly how this framework works and how to use it. Um, we're going to talk a lot more about it at Meet Magento Florida, but step one is identify. And there's really two approaches to identifying your technical debt. [00:05:26] JOSHUA WARREN: And both are very important. The first one is quantitative. [00:05:30] JOSHUA WARREN: so use tools like the different, uh, testing tools and testing frameworks, say with Magento, um, or with PHP if you're using a different PHP based platform to really analyze your code base. There's also some very cool new things happening, um, in the Magento and Adobe commerce space with a new test essentials package that a community member has released. [00:05:50] JOSHUA WARREN: And again, you want all the details on that. You're going to have to attend my talk at Meet Magento Florida. Uh, but basically go through and do the actual [00:06:00] kind of quantitative tests, the different code analysis, uh, things you can run to analyze the quantitative, um, amount of technical debt on your site. [00:06:09] JOSHUA WARREN: But then, and that's where a lot of people stop. They just stop there. They have their list. They start trying to go through that list, but what that misses is qualitative. So they, you need to identify tech debt from a qualitative standpoint as well. Talk to your team and this is, this is kind of fun. So in the development world, we have what's called code smell. [00:06:29] JOSHUA WARREN: So a developer can kind of look at some code and be like, Oh, that doesn't smell. Right. I mean, something may be a little off here. Well, on the qualitative side, I feel like e commerce platforms, you can sometimes come into a project and there's a platform smell. And what that means is there might be some features that aren't being used that really ought to be. [00:06:48] JOSHUA WARREN: There might be frequent crashes or just areas of the site that people avoid because they don't work properly. You want to go through and you want to document that. And that is where you're going to find probably your most important technical debt, [00:07:00] but sometimes the most overlooked technical debt. So after you've identified, you assess again, you score it on those three items already mentioned. [00:07:08] JOSHUA WARREN: So urgency, business impact, and complexity. [00:07:11] JOSHUA WARREN: and then you go through and you prioritize, and you actually plot the issues out on a grid on the worksheet that I'll be sharing. And basically if it's high urgency, high impact, And a low complexity. I mean, that's go do that right now. Like that's what you absolutely want to prioritize. [00:07:28] JOSHUA WARREN: Sometimes though, you'll find these issues that are low urgency, low impact, and, uh, you realize, Oh, we just need to document that. We just need to have it on a list and say, Hey, we're aware of this. We're okay with this. This is tech debt that we can live with. Um, and this way, this framework is going to give you. [00:07:45] JOSHUA WARREN: A very clear action plan and help you focus your resources on what really matters. Um, so that's just a sneak peek and a little bit of a preview of the 30 minute presentation I'll be giving at Meet Magento Florida. I don't want to give away too much in this [00:08:00] episode, um, but do stay tuned. Hopefully you can attend Meet Magento Florida. [00:08:04] JOSHUA WARREN: If you can't, I'm sure there will be some great recording of the event up afterwards. Um, but I'm really hoping you can join me at Meet Magento Florida. Um, I'll be diving in much deeper into how you can manage check and hold debt in your e commerce operations. I'm actually going to work through a real world example from one of Creatuity's clients of how we helped a client eliminate their technical debt and really introduce some cutting edge tools that Magento developers and projects can start using right away. [00:08:31] JOSHUA WARREN: Um, I also already mentioned, but I want to remind you, I will be recording live episodes of Commerce today. So if you are going to be at Meet Magento Florida 2025, send me a note. I would love to schedule some time to sit down and interview you and just chat through something with you. Um, for an episode of commerce today. [00:08:48] JOSHUA WARREN: even if you just want to give me your reactions on the event, I'm also just going to do some fun live streaming from there as well here onto LinkedIn. [00:08:56] JOSHUA WARREN: and if you're, you know, more of a behind the camera, behind the [00:09:00] scenes kind of person, definitely still find me there. I always love chatting with, um, people in the Magento community. [00:09:07] JOSHUA WARREN: And if you're not in the Magento community or you've never been to a Meet Magento event, you might even say, what? Meet Magento? I thought Magento was a platform. Who am I meeting in Florida? So Meet Magento is actually an event series that started long, long, long, long ago. Um, I believe the first one may have actually been in Germany. [00:09:24] JOSHUA WARREN: Um, but even the U. S. edition, which began with Meet Magento New York has been around for about 10 years now. And, uh, It's just a great, unofficial, uh, conference about Magento that is, um, Typically organized by a local organizer and kind of sanctioned and overseen by the Magento Association, which is the, the nonprofit trade association that represents all Magento users. [00:09:47] JOSHUA WARREN: And it started as almost like a, um, an easier way to meet the whole Magento ecosystem without necessarily going to a big conference like Magento Imagine, the old [00:10:00] Magento conference, or the, uh, the Adobe Summit conference that we have now. So it's kind of a way That there will be Adobe people there. There will be Magento open source people there, Magento association people, but also a lot of the, the tech partners and providers around the Magento ecosystem, a lot of the agencies, and it's just a chance to all get together. [00:10:19] JOSHUA WARREN: And, um, share what we've been learning, share what we've been working on and see how we can help each other. And so, uh, I've learned more at Meet Magento events than really anywhere else. Um, I've also had probably the most fun at Meet Magento events and this is actually my first time attending Meet Magento Florida. [00:10:36] JOSHUA WARREN: It's the third year for the event and I have heard that the first two years were amazing. So, I can't wait to be there for Meet Magento Florida 2025. Again, I hope you can join me. Um, if you're a merchant, There's a 50 percent off discount. You don't even need a code. You don't have to talk to anybody to get a code or anything. [00:10:53] JOSHUA WARREN: You just go to the Meet Magento Florida website and register and get that 50 percent off discount. All right. So [00:11:00] stay tuned to my LinkedIn. Um, you'll find me on LinkedIn [00:11:03] JOSHUA WARREN: as Joshua Warren with a creativity gold background behind my head. And I will have Magento, [00:11:10] JOSHUA WARREN: uh, Florida event. [00:11:13] JOSHUA WARREN: We'll have information and all the live streams for Meet Magento Florida up there as well. [00:11:18] JOSHUA WARREN: Again, if you're going to attend the event, please reach out to me. Um, LinkedIn is probably the best way to reach me. [00:11:23] JOSHUA WARREN: one of these days I'm going to get back in on some of the other social platforms that y'all are all hanging out on. Bye. Reach out to me for now on LinkedIn and I would love to connect and set aside some time to meet with you at the event. [00:11:35] JOSHUA WARREN: thank you for joining me today. Tech debt doesn't have to hold you back. You don't have to get frozen thinking about it. It's really just a matter taking a quantitative and qualitative objective look at it, identifying the right priorities and taking action. [00:11:49] JOSHUA WARREN: This is Joshua Warren, and I will see you next time on Commerce Today. ​ [00:12:00]