The Strategic side of Technical Debt: Applying Force Field Analysis

Technical debt analysis is primarily a technical activity. The central tasks involve assessing the effort needed to minimize the costs associated with accidental complexity resulting from poor software engineering practices. To mitigate this debt, we must allocate additional resources to measure and enhance the overall product quality. This issue takes on a strategic dimension: determining when to start investing for remedy technical debt, and when to stop the remediation.

FORCE FIELD ANALYSIS is a technique used in strategic management to analyze the competitive forces within an industry or a probem context. This type of analysis helps business stakeholders understand the factors that shape the problem in order to make more informative decisions. The tool provides a perspective on the forces at work when trying to make changes or take a decision. The idea is to identify the problem context, the goal to achieve, and the set of opponent factors that characterize the current situation. If a factor is positive (it positively affects the decision), it is considered a DRIVING FORCE, otherwise it is considered a RESTRAINING FORCE.

Force Field Analysis can be exploited to define a decision process for technical debt remediation articulated on the following steps. For each step, we identify factors and put them on the left (positive) or on the right (negative) side on an imaginary vertical line representing the STATUS QUO. Initially we attribute the same weight to each force. If driving forces prevail, we have a positive indication on paying for technical debt remediation, otherwise we should consider alternatives (accept the costs, stop evolving the product, replace the entire system, etc.). The analysis can be either qualitative or quantitative (in the latter case, we exploit the weights associated to forces).

1. Assess the rivarly of existing competitive code quality factors

• Analyze the quality of code within the software system.
• Consider factors such as code complexity (structural, procedural, and cognitive), the adherence to coding standards, and the presence of documentation.

2. Evaluate threats of new technologies

• Evaluate the ease with which new technologies can be adopted in the software, considering both system architecture, dev process, and people.
• Assess threats of falling behind due to outdated technologies, the presence of regulations, and de-facto standards that a particular market take for grant.

3. Assess the influence of user satisfaction for the adoption of the product

• Understand the level of satisfaction among end-users. Assess feedback, bug reports, and customer support interactions.
• Identify high bargaining power of buyers that may indicate a need to prioritize user-focused improvements.
• Evaluate how delaying such activities for paying technical debt remediation can impact on the current product adoption.

4. Assess third-party dependencies

• Examine dependencies on external libraries, frameworks, or services. Assess their stability and support.
• Evaluate the potential impacts on the product if a critical third-party element becomes unreliable or unsupported.

5. Assess the threat of competitive products

• Identify alternative software systems that could replace or compete with the product. Analyze the strengths and weaknesses of competing systems.
• Address technical debt that might make the system vulnerable to being replaced by more modern or efficient alternatives.

By analyzing these competitive forces and applying them to the software development context, we can gain insights into the factors that influence the management of technical debt. This analysis can guide decisions on resource allocation, prioritization of technical debt reduction efforts. Moreover, they are also useful for starting the strategic planning to ensure the long-term health and competitiveness of the software system, product, or service. Of course, nothing remains unchanged forever, so it's important to continually reassess these factors as the software landscape evolves.