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I think the author has a different interpretation of "technical debt" than how it was originally intended. Technical debt is not accidental and it doesn't cons

I think the author has a different interpretation of "technical debt" than how it was originally intended. Technical debt is not accidental and it doesn't consist of small mistakes, but it's due to a deliberate decision to cut corners when trying to get product or feature launched. Just like financial debt is not accidental, but a deliberate decision. (although you could argue that credit cards etc can create accidental debt too). Idea is that it's okay and usually a good business decision to accumulate some technical debt to speed up your product development, but you need to keep eye on it and reduce it regularly, because if it grows too large, it can totally halt your product development.

grumpycanuck 15y ago
My experience is that it is a very rare and enlightened management team that allows developers to go back and clean up the technical debt that was created during the mad dash to get your application out the door. Most of the time you are stuck with technical debt because there is no room in your timeline to go back and fix stuff that you know is broken. YMMV, but as the blog post author I'm keenly aware of this situation.
- feralchimp 15y ago
  Sometimes it's up to engineers to say "I'm fixing this," and for QA people to say "I'm not signing off on this until it's fixed." Maybe I've just been lucky, but all the places I've worked had developers and QA people that were willing to force quality into a product.
brd 15y ago
"Technical debt is not accidental" is a pretty bold statement in my opinion. Technical debt could be defined as all which needs refactoring. Making a mistake in your original system design because of an unforeseen feature, scope creep, optimization requirements as you scale, all are things that can drive up your technical debt. Conscious shortcuts are only the most obvious path to debt and they're most likely the easiest to pay back as well. Technical debt is a concept you become intimately familiar with working in the enterprise space.

grumpycanuck 15y ago

My experience is that it is a very rare and enlightened management team that allows developers to go back and clean up the technical debt that was created during the mad dash to get your application out the door. Most of the time you are stuck with technical debt because there is no room in your timeline to go back and fix stuff that you know is broken. YMMV, but as the blog post author I'm keenly aware of this situation.

feralchimp 15y ago
Sometimes it's up to engineers to say "I'm fixing this," and for QA people to say "I'm not signing off on this until it's fixed." Maybe I've just been lucky, but all the places I've worked had developers and QA people that were willing to force quality into a product.

brd 15y ago

"Technical debt is not accidental" is a pretty bold statement in my opinion. Technical debt could be defined as all which needs refactoring. Making a mistake in your original system design because of an unforeseen feature, scope creep, optimization requirements as you scale, all are things that can drive up your technical debt. Conscious shortcuts are only the most obvious path to debt and they're most likely the easiest to pay back as well. Technical debt is a concept you become intimately familiar with working in the enterprise space.