Forrester urges IT leaders to dump technical debt

IT leaders ought to scale back their legacy IT to assist them handle the danger and uncertainty going through companies resulting from world volatility, in keeping with analyst Forrester’s 2026 Price range planning: put together for much more volatility report, which recommends IT leaders to “declare chapter on legacy tech debt” earlier than they collapse into it.

The analyst agency famous that operating regularly on a tech debt treadmill just isn’t serving to organisations to maneuver ahead. “You’re fighting paying down tech debt, however extra will get added to the pile on a regular basis,” analysts Sharyn Leaver, Eric Brown, Riley McDonnell and Rachel Birrell famous within the report.

They warned that technical debt each will increase IT prices and dangers whereas slowing down the supply of latest capabilities. Forrester urged IT leaders to outsource help for technical debt to a supplier, which then allows the IT crew to drive ahead a contemporary IT structure and supply practices.

“Outsourcing the legacy tech stack to confirmed outsource suppliers will guarantee operational reliability at a negotiated value and release funds and groups to construct a contemporary, adaptive and AI-powered ecosystem that drives innovation and positions you for future development,” the report’s authors stated.

They beneficial IT leaders develop a long-term IT technique, which requires self-discipline to handle by way of the inevitable bumps in information switch.

Trying past decreasing budgets for technical debt, Forrester reported that 86% of tech leaders anticipate will increase to their funds for 2026. The analyst agency discovered that 14% of IT leaders anticipate double-digit will increase, demonstrating substantial development. The areas seeing development in IT funding embrace generative AI (GenAI), product analytics and risk intelligence.

The authors of the report beneficial that IT departments run low- or no-cost experimentation, which prepares the organisation to maneuver quick when it must. The analyst additionally suggested IT leaders to proceed to check pipeline applied sciences that might not be able to ship massive worth in 2026, however which could possibly be the subsequent to ship worth in 2027 and past. 

Agentic AI is among the many new improvements recognized within the Forrester report. The authors urged tackling activity automation in a single software first, then throughout a number of enterprise functions. “Begin by experimenting with AI brokers that solely automate duties inside one platform; it’s safer to prioritise read-only/analytical apps to keep away from the danger of breaking knowledge entry or knowledge high quality guidelines,” they stated.

As extra agentic AI capabilities are added, Forrester stated IT leaders ought to assess how analytical BI platform brokers speak to the organisation’s enterprise useful resource planning (ERP) or buyer relationship administration (CRM) platform brokers to ship insight-driven actions.

Forrester suggested IT decision-makers to pay shut consideration to the communication protocols used for multiplatform agent orchestration – such because the Multi-Agent Communication Protocol, IBM Agent Communication Protocol, and Google’s Agent2Agent Protocol – as these requirements are evolving.

The analyst agency additionally urged that enterprise and IT leaders be taught the professionals and cons of utilizing artificial knowledge for quicker buyer insights. In line with Forrester, artificial knowledge unlocks new alternatives for conducting buyer analysis at scale, particularly when recruiting members is difficult or knowledge is proscribed.