About Technical Debt Advisors

We have spent years building the kinds of systems we now help companies evaluate.

Technical Debt Advisors grew out of more than a decade of software engineering, open source development, technical standards work, and complex production projects at Yet Analytics. We know technical debt from the builder side, the operator side, and the executive side.

Where we come from

Built by people who have owned the consequences of software decisions.

Yet Analytics was founded in Baltimore in 2014 and has spent more than a decade building data infrastructure, open source software, interoperability tools, and production systems for organizations across defense, industry, and education. Technical Debt Advisors takes that engineering experience and applies it directly to software risk, maintainability, ownership, continuity, AI-assisted development, and executive decision-making.

We have built and maintained production systems.Our perspective comes from operating software over time, not just reviewing it from a distance.

We have worked in environments where security, interoperability, and continuity matter.That changes how we think about technical debt and what deserves attention first.

We have led open source and standards work.We are used to separating durable engineering principles from vendor-specific answers.

We are not here to sell you a rebuild.Our job is to tell you what the risk actually is and what, if anything, should be done about it.

Team experience

Senior people, directly involved.

TDA engagements are led by senior technical and executive practitioners. The people interpreting the findings are the same people who have spent years making architecture, engineering, product, standards, and governance decisions themselves.

2014Yet Analytics was founded in Baltimore, beginning more than a decade of production software and data infrastructure work.

Open SourceLong-running development and stewardship of software used in standards-based data ecosystems and semantic technology.

IEEE / SISOLeadership and technical participation in international standards work around data, learning systems, and AI.

USAF R&DPrincipal investigator and engineering leadership experience on Air Force SBIR projects including for synthetic data.

The team has spent years working where software architecture, interoperability, security, data, and long-term maintainability have real operational consequences.

Co-Founder, Yet Analytics

Shelly Blake-Plock

Shelly works at the intersection of technology, data, governance, and executive decision-making. He has spent more than a decade leading Yet Analytics and helping organizations translate complex technical systems into practical business decisions.

President and CEO of Yet Analytics.
Officer of the IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee since 2018.
Vice-chair of IEEE Std 2247.4-2025 on ethically aligned AI in adaptive instructional systems.
Principal investigator and executive lead on advanced data, AI, and software R&D programs.

Focus at TDA: executive risk, governance, AI-assisted development, prioritization, and business context.

Chief Technology Officer, Yet Analytics

Cliff Casey

Cliff leads technical architecture and R&D at Yet Analytics, with experience across production systems, data infrastructure, interoperability, simulation, and software research programs where technical choices must hold up under real operational constraints.

Chief Technology Officer of Yet Analytics.
Principal investigator on U.S. Air Force SBIR programs.
Technical contributor to IEEE and SISO standards-based data architecture and xAPI work.
Member of the I2IDL Technical Steering Committee for open source governance and data standards.

Focus at TDA: architecture, system risk, dependencies, technical due diligence, and remediation strategy.

VP of Engineering, Yet Analytics

Milt Reder

Milt has spent his career building software and leading engineering work, including the systems, deployment practices, data stores, and development workflows behind Yet Analytics' production and open source software portfolio.

VP of Engineering at Yet Analytics.
Background in software development and instructional technology at Johns Hopkins.
Experience with cloud infrastructure, containerized deployment, continuous integration, and multiple database technologies.
Member of the I2IDL Technical Steering Committee for open source governance and technical conformance.

Focus at TDA: code health, maintainability, engineering workflow, implementation risk, and long-term ownership.

How we work

Technical debt is a business problem with technical evidence.

Code quality matters, but code is only part of the picture. Deadlines, incentives, ownership, staffing, procurement, review practices, and governance all shape the software a company ends up depending on. That is why our assessments connect technical findings to business consequences instead of producing a pile of engineering observations with no decision attached.

We separate urgent risk from tolerable mess.

We explain findings in business language.

We recommend remediation only where it reduces meaningful risk.

We are comfortable telling you when the right answer is to leave something alone.

Start with the question

What software does your business depend on, and how sure are you that you understand the risk?

You can start with the advanced scorecard or send us the situation you are trying to understand. We will tell you whether it looks like something worth investigating.

Take the advanced scorecard Ask us about a situation