What is Technical Debt: A Guide to Understanding and Managing It Effectively
Effectively managing technical debt can make a huge difference between a failed and successful software project. With so much at stake, it has become essential for software developers and high-level decision-makers to understand what tech debt is and how to manage it effectively.
This write-up is a comprehensive guide to technical debt. We will explain, what the term tech debt means, how to measure different types of technical debt at your organization, and how it affects software development projects. For a more detailed look on how to manage technical debt be sure to check our full blog article.
What Is Technical Debt: A Brief Overview
Technical debt (aka code debt, design debt or simply TD) refers to the practice of taking shortcuts during software development to achieve immediate results. This concept also represents the extra burden that arises when a mediocre code is implemented, which is usually useless, poorly designed, or redundant.
It's similar to borrowing money. Just as borrowing money can help you in the short term but accumulate interest over time, taking shortcuts in software development can provide immediate results but can cause problems like the neccessity of future reworks in the long run.
In other words, subpar solutions and quick fixes may speed up your software development cycle, but some issues that may arise in the future are expensive to address.
Some of the common symptoms of unaddressed technical debt include:
Ward Cunningham, the author of the Agile Manifesto, introduced the concept of technical debt in the early 1990s.
Common Causes of Technical Debt
The common causes of technical debt include the following:
1.? Development Causes
Development-based causes for tech debt happen when organizations introduce poor documentation, insufficient resources, and lack of testing to their coding process.
2.? Business Causes
Pressure to release the final product for less money or within less time can lead to technical debt.
3.? People-Based Causes
Poor communication, lack of experience, and distributed teams are common causes of technical debt.
Beyond that, the following issues can also cause tech debt:
Software development teams tend to ignore these factors, which can lead to the accumulation of technical inefficiencies. In addition, unchecked tech debts can make software development more expensive to change than re-implement.
Types of Technical Debt
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Technical debt can be categorized into several different ways, but the most common types are:
1.? Intentional Tech Debt
The development teams create Intentional technical debt consciously or deliberately, so they can get their product to market quickly. This type of tech debt is risky as it involves deliberate choice, but it refers to a known risk that stakeholders can track, document, and remedy at the appropriate time. In exchange for launching the product quickly, organizations can face poor performance, product bugs, insecurity, user dissatisfaction, and some level of instability.
2.? Unintentional Tech Debt
Unintentional tech debt (aka known as outdated, passive, or accidental technical debt) arises due to a lack of software engineering expertise, coding skills, and unexpected complexity during the product development cycle. When organizations move a quick shipping deadline unexpectedly, it causes product engineering teams to incompletely test their products, cut corners, or introduce unexpected bugs into the product.
Unintentional debt is difficult to document because it often remains unidentified for a while. This type of tech debt can also be remediated, but businesses have to modify their development processes accordingly.
Other types of tech debt can also be distinguished, depending on what the team owes, such as test, service, process, design, code, defect, build, and architect debt.
Impact of Unaddressed Tech Debt
If tech debt remains unaddressed, it can impact businesses in the following ways:
If tech debt is not paid on time, it makes it harder for developers to work within the existing code base, which can slow down the product design process.
Technical debt usually results in expected code bugs, leading to poor experience and a lack of satisfaction. Customer defections ultimately translate to increased expenses because of the increased need for customer services.
Technical debt makes it difficult for businesses and organizations to scale up and adopt new technologies. A recent study by Accenture Federal Digital Decoupling highlights that more than 81% of businesses feel that tech debt has reduced their flexibility to move to new technologies.
Technical debt also has several negative financial effects on businesses. McKinsey reports that on average 10 to 20% of a company’s budget is diverted to repaying technical debt. In addition, managing tech debt also requires costlier human capital to recover debt-laden software.
Managing Tech Debt
Managing technical debt is a complex but pivotal process because if businesses undertake tech debt without a proper plan to pay it off, it can worsen the problem. With the following tips, you can manage tech debt in your organization:
The Bottom Line
Technical debt is frequently misunderstood, and many developers associate it with any type of poorly written code. This misunderstanding limits the utility of tech debt. Though tech debt is inevitable, it can give businesses greater flexibility, agility, and execution speed if managed properly.
Interested to learn more about managing tech debt? Make sure to check our 6 Technical Debt Reduction Strategies.
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4 个月Hi Manuela Grundy could last night’s webinar point to huge opportunity managing and reducing cost of Technical Debt when Obsolescence Management is applied? Could be an interesting vector for greater participation in the conference?