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That is an interesting image. "surfacing the costs". It evokes the idea that most technical debt is below the surface (hidden by the UI ?) and so is rarely not
by whitten 6y ago
That is an interesting image. "surfacing the costs". It evokes the idea that most technical debt is below the surface (hidden by the UI ?) and so is rarely noticed by anyone other than the programmers.
The trick is, how do you let the internal problems and inconsistencies become visible to the end-users so the decision makers will decide to put time and effort into resolving them without being fired because the program appears to be falling apart ?
- chrisweekly 6y agoThanks; and yes - I do believe, strongly, that business owners / stakeholders generally radically under-appreciate the costs of unintentional tech debt, which is mostly invisible to them. Regarding your proposed (tongue-in-cheek?) tactic of somehow making it apparent to end users as a way to get the attention of said stakeholders: user-perceived performance is actually, seriously, the bridge you're looking for. Companies are increasingly aware that performance (in the sense of site speed / WPO / UX latency) matters ^1. Suboptimal performance follows directly from failure to address tech debt. Efforts to improve performance are always stymied by tech debt. Thus, execs who learn to care about performance have become your allies. 1. https://wpostats.com https://wpostats.com