By Chris Brill, Field CTO, Myriad360
Why Maintenance is the Foundation of Innovation
Ransomware has struck. Security teams scramble to isolate affected systems, restore operations, and recover critical data. Suddenly, that unsexiest of topics—backups—becomes the only thing that matters. Without reliable, tested backups, organizations face catastrophic loss, extended downtime, and irate stakeholders.
These crises spotlight a hard truth: foundational maintenance tasks rarely get prioritized until a disaster strikes. Organizations understandably bias toward shiny, high-visibility projects while neglecting the quiet work that sustains them. After all, nobody ever won an award for keeping a clean house. But innovation doesn’t happen in isolation. Maintenance forms the foundation for scalability, resilience, and innovation.
The Big Three Quiet Drivers of Tech Debt
Backups: Your Last Line of Defense
Backups are an organization’s insurance policy. They don’t generate revenue, and they rarely get discussed until you are in trouble. However, unreliable backups can cripple an organization during crises like ransomware attacks, hardware failures, or even accidental deletions.
Without regular testing, backups may fail when they’re needed most. In fact, the average cost to recover from a ransomware attack in 2024 reached $2.73 million—up from $1.82 million in 2023. Organizations that treat backups as a “set-it-and-forget-it” task expose themselves to unnecessary risk. Properly managed backups not only enable recovery but also support innovation by allowing teams to experiment, test, and iterate without fear of data loss.
Documentation: The Map for Innovation
Documentation provides the roadmap for maintaining and evolving complex systems. Yet, it often goes incomplete or out of date. When team members leave, undocumented processes and systems become black boxes that slow onboarding, disrupt workflows, and complicate even simple changes.
Consistent documentation saves time and resources by enabling teams to work efficiently and confidently. It prevents duplication of effort, ensures operational consistency, and provides clarity during critical transitions. Failing to prioritize documentation creates friction that accumulates into significant tech debt over time.
Clean-Up: The Invisible Essential
Clean-up involves retiring outdated systems, refactoring code, and consolidating processes. It is one of the least celebrated yet most essential tasks. Clean-up frees up resources, simplifies operations, and ensures that systems remain relevant and efficient. It requires intentional effort, but neglecting it compounds operational debt. Proactive clean-up keeps organizations agile and able to adapt to new challenges without being weighed down by legacy clutter.
Tool Sprawl: The Debt Multiplier
Every new tool comes with the promise of better productivity, faster delivery, or improved integration. But what happens to the old tools? Too often, organizations adopt new technologies without retiring outdated ones. This “tool sprawl” clutters the tech stack, creating inefficiencies, increasing costs, and distracting teams from more strategic work.
Tool sprawl introduces overlapping systems, fragmented data flows, and increased management overhead. For example, teams may spend more time reconciling data between redundant tools than leveraging insights. Without clear policies for retiring unused tools, organizations waste resources while adding to their tech debt.
The solution lies in discipline. Organizations must evaluate their tech stack regularly and enforce clear retirement plans for tools that no longer align with their needs. Doing so prevents complexity from spiraling out of control and ensures that teams can focus on high-value activities.
New Things Are Never Done: The Ongoing Commitment
Every new system, tool, or process requires ongoing effort. Organizations often assume that once they’ve launched a project, the work is complete. In reality, every new initiative introduces ongoing responsibilities that, if ignored, eventually drive tech debt.
Failing to support and cultivate new tools or processes turns them into liabilities. For example, a new CRM platform may work well at launch but fail to deliver value if teams don’t update integrations, train users, or adapt workflows. Neglected initiatives shift from assets to burdens, adding to the growing list of maintenance tasks that organizations struggle to manage.
Viewing every project as an ongoing commitment changes how organizations prioritize their resources. Innovation isn’t a finish line—it’s a continuous process that demands investment in both new initiatives and their long-term support.
Proactive Steps to Avoid Maintenance-Driven Tech Debt
To escape the tech debt cycle, organizations must embed maintenance into their operational philosophy. These steps can help:
Build Maintenance into Innovation Projects Backups, documentation, and clean-up should be planned alongside new initiatives, not treated as afterthoughts. Build these tasks into project timelines and budgets.
Audit the Tech Stack Regularly Schedule recurring evaluations to identify inefficiencies, retire unused tools, and optimize processes. Make audits a core operational practice.
Align Leadership Priorities with Maintenance Leadership must embrace maintenance as critical to long-term success. This alignment ensures that foundational tasks receive the resources and attention they require.
Develop Clear Retirement Strategies Retire outdated tools and systems with intention. Clear policies for managing the end-of-life phase reduce complexity and prevent sprawl.
By prioritizing maintenance as an essential enabler of innovation, organizations build the agility to pivot, scale, and adapt in any environment. Maintenance may not capture attention, but it creates the foundation that makes everything else possible.