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Technical Debt – What it is and what to do about it
- memracom 13y agoMoney debt is always recorded in the books and included in a regular (monthly) assessment of the business's value. So why do we not do this with technical debt? Instead it gets swept under the carpet until its impact is so overwhelming that only rigid processes and tight sprint deadlines allow new features and bugfixes to get done.
- dragonwriter 13y ago> Money debt is always recorded in the books and included in a regular (monthly) assessment of the business's value. So why do we not do this with technical debt? Because money debt is unambiguously quantifiable, while technical debt is not. If we had even remotely good methods of quantifying technical debt, we'd probably be much better at avoiding creating it -- as it is, the immediate cost of not having the desired features today is readily apparent, the deferred cost in the form of technical debt of doing it in a slipshod manner rather than taking extra effort to do it right is far less clear.
- genehughson 13y agoPricing risk is difficult, but that shouldn't hold you back. It's an estimate, just like the estimate of effort to mitigate. Precision re: potential liability is less important than awareness that the debt exists.
- ChikkaChiChi 13y agoInstead of trying to quantify your technical debt, the first step should be to determine who your technical spenders are. I work in a company with a toxic environment where nepotism allows for projects to absolutely derail entire projects and teams for months on end. Ideas hit the fan like loose stool and suddenly everyone is sent scrambling to accomplish a thing that has barely any focus other than it's a pet project. If you can locate your spenders, then you can determine the best way to control or excise them from the technical budget.