I think most IT professionals are acquainted with the term “technical debt,” the future cost of additional rework or maintenance that results (or has resulted) from choosing an easier, faster, or less optimal technical solution (rather than a better-designed, more sustainable one).
It’s similar to financial debt, where you borrow money now, but you’ll eventually need to repay it with interest. In the case of technical debt, this is usually the “borrowing” of speed and convenience, with “interest” being incurred in the form of higher complexity, reduced system performance, more bugs, harder maintenance, or some other unwanted IT management issue.
However, you might not have heard of “IT experience debt” yet. This is similar to technical debt, with IT experience debt occurring when organizations prioritize short-term fixes or expediency over long-term and user-centric solutions.
Over time, IT experience debt will hurt your organization. For example, the gap between what end-users want and need and what your IT organization delivers widens. If you’ve read any of the other HappySignals blogs, you’ll appreciate how this adversely affects end-user productivity, which is likely to have a knock-on effect on business operations and outcomes.
However, IT experience debt isn’t just a productivity-affecting issue; it can also be a security and compliance nightmare. This blog explains why.
IT experience debt explained
The brief introduction to IT experience debt above might be insufficient. So here’s some more “color.”
IT experience debt occurs when an IT organization defers improvements in system or tool usability, accessibility, or support, usually to speed up change. The quality of the IT experience for end-users is sacrificed – intentionally or unintentionally – for short-term convenience and maybe even cost savings.
The debt can take the form of:
- Poorly designed user interfaces, with speed and cost prioritized over usability
- One-size-fits-all solutions, with no tailoring to different end-user roles, personas, or generational needs
- Usability friction, such as inconsistent or unclear processes and overly complex processes (including the applied system authentication requirements)
- Legacy systems that are patched but not modernized
- A lack of organizational change management (OCM), training, and onboarding for revised or new tools.
These and other IT technical debt issues compound over time, creating end-user frustration and the adoption of workarounds and shadow IT practices. While the former is likely unwanted, this blog focuses on the latter because workarounds and shadow IT practices can severely impact compliance and security.
Workaround and shadow IT use
The term “workaround” here describes where end-users find ways of making their work easier (and themselves more productive). One of the most common examples is using personal devices for work outside of defined corporate IT policies (which was and still is called “shadow IT” versus “bring your own device” policies). Think of this as end-users breaching corporate IT policies by using personal smartphones, tablets, or PCs/laptops to access company email, files, or applications because their “official” devices don’t meet their expectations and needs.
The term “shadow IT” might take the “maturer” reader back 20 years to when the “consumerization of IT” was in vogue, with IT organizations worried about end-users employing personal devices and applications instead of the corporate equivalents. However, the concept of shadow IT has never gone away, despite the efforts of IT organizations to improve the corporate IT service delivery and support status quo.
If corporate IT solutions are difficult to use and cause productivity issues, your employees will seek alternatives. They might use personal cloud storage services, unauthorized applications, or other routes to make working easier. Importantly, these workarounds are likely out of the corporate IT organization’s control, putting the corporate IT infrastructure and data at risk of security breaches.
So what might be deemed as, at worst, affecting end-user productivity could actually have far more serious compliance and security implications. As stated earlier, IT experience debt can hurt your organization.
Examples of workarounds and shadow IT use
While using personal devices is the oft-quoted shadow IT use case, many other examples exist. These include:
- Uploading work files to personal cloud storage services, such as Google Drive, Dropbox, or OneDrive, usually to share the files between devices.
- Emailing work files to access them more easily (usually from other devices).
- Avoiding VPN use, perhaps by using SaaS application alternatives to corporate applications.
- Using unauthorized collaboration tools such as WhatsApp groups because the official collaboration tools are too slow, have missing features, or are poorly adopted.
- Installing unapproved software on corporate devices because the official applications are outdated, incompatible, or missing critical functionality.
- Delaying or avoiding system updates and patches based on poor previous experiences – for example, because they interrupt work and degrade personal productivity.
Plus, shadow IT now includes free artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as ChatGPT or DeepSeek to improve productivity.
All of these examples can put your organization at risk, not only from a security perspective but also in terms of meeting compliance requirements.
How compliance risks are amplified by IT experience debt
Different industry sectors are subject to various regulatory compliance frameworks, such as GDPR, HIPAA, PCI-DSS, and SOX. These compliance frameworks require that specific IT controls are in place, including:
- Strict data protection protocols
- Secure user authentication
- Robust access controls.
However, as covered above, IT experience debt can undermine these needs, such as the risk of data leakage when sensitive corporate data is stored in unauthorized locations. Leading to audit failures and non-compliance penalties (and potentially reputational damage).
Compliance risks can seem scary, particularly if the term IT experience debt is new to you and you’ve no idea where it is within your organization. Thankfully, experience data will help.
To avoid this compliance nightmare and prevent IT experience debt from compromising security, please contact HappySignals to discuss how experience data provides insight into how your current IT service delivery and support practices cause end-user friction.
