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This week, Dan Neumann is joined by Agile\u2019s Thought Chief Architect, Michael Cooper to explore the topic of Technical Debt.

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In this episode, Dan and Mike share how Technical Debt has become a dirty term among technical and non-technical people, where it can be considered to be a waste of time and money. Mike is here to demystify Tech Debt and talk about the necessary steps to take when encountering it, like finding its root cause and advancing a strategy to address it.

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Key Takeaways

• \u25cf What can be some indications that technical debt is present?

  • \u25cb The first sign is that things are not going right, people can be unhappy about some aspect of the platform, system, or project.

  • \u25cb One indicator is that the velocity is slowing down.

  • \u25cb When decisions are procrastinated we accumulate tech debt... is this a deliberate choice? Not really, but we still refuse to make decisions to address it.

  • \u25cb Stress is an indicator of Tech Debt.

  • \u25cb The passage of time will create Tech Debt.

  • \u25cb When defect rates get to a point that they are no longer tolerable or acceptable, you have to consider the decisions that were put off in order to reach that state.

• \u25cf How to avoid technical debt:

  • \u25cb Automated Testing

  • \u25cb Unit Tests for capturing the developer\u2019s intent

  • \u25cb Static Code Analysis tools (such as SonarQube) for generating metrics about code complexity.

• \u25cf Most code in the world has high-tech debt. However, it is not an issue because people don\u2019t need to change it.

  • \u25cb Software becomes \u201chard\u201d when it gets enough tech debt.

  • \u25cb The most used strategy is to do nothing when encountering tech debt, and if you are not making changes to the code, it is an acceptable and reasonable approach.

  • \u25cb The highest reach approach is trying to change and rewrite the entire codebase. You are likely to lose the functionality that you originally had.

  • \u25cb One way of approaching tech debt is to make slow changes only when you hit that piece of code again.

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• Mentioned in this Episode:

• What is technical debt? By Chris Cairns and Sarah Allen

• Applied Software Measurement: Assuring Productivity and Quality, by Capers Jones.

• Agile Estimating and Planning, by Mike Cohn

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