What are examples of technical debt?

Here are some real-life examples of tech debt causes:

  • An unreasonable deadline that pressures the team into a quick release.
  • Using an easier, familiar platform instead of an optimal one.
  • Low-quality software design decisions.
  • Poor up-front definition of project goals.
  • Lack of coding skills.
  • Lack of product ownership.

How do you explain technical debt?

Technical debt (also known as tech debt or code debt) describes what results when development teams take actions to expedite the delivery of a piece of functionality or a project which later needs to be refactored. In other words, it’s the result of prioritizing speedy delivery over perfect code.

What happens when technical debt increases?

Unaddressed technical debt increases software entropy and cost of further rework. Similarly to monetary debt, technical debt is not necessarily a bad thing, and sometimes (e.g. as a proof-of-concept) is required to move projects forward.

What is the impact of technical debt?

Too much technical debt can reduce your team’s agility, produce poor quality code, strain your testing team and eventually reduce your company’s overall productivity.

What are the causes of technical debt?

Technical debt may have one or more causes, such as:

  • Time pressures.
  • Overly complex technical design.
  • Poor alignment to standards.
  • Lack of skill.
  • Suboptimal code.
  • Delayed refactoring.
  • Insufficient testing.

Why technical debt is important?

Technical debt is important for software developers to consider is because code that is hard to work with generally hampers developer’s productivity and results in less stable code. All too often the term “technical debt” ends up being applied to a wide range of issues, and as such, becomes unmanageable.

What causes technical debt?

“Technical debt occurs when IT teams need to forgo certain development work – [such as] writing clean code, writing concise documentation, or building clean data sources – to hit a particular business deadline,” says Scott Ambler, VP and chief scientist of disciplined agile at Project Management Institute.

How can technical debt effect velocity?

Left unmanaged, technical debt can swallow a software product. Technical debt can rise to the level where the team can add no new functionality to a product. All they are able to do is fight the problems associated with technical debt. Velocity is a measure of how fast a Scrum team delivers business value.

How does technical debt affect transparency?

Technical Debt Impacts Transparency It can cause a false impression about the quality and the progress of the Product Increment. It is like a hidden cost (rework or lower productivity) which impacts predictability. For example, it will be hard for the Development Team to estimate the effort required to build features.

How can we reduce technology debt?

Several ways to reduce or eliminate technical debt include:

  1. Automated testing. Don’t waste time on manual testing; it’s largely inefficient.
  2. Project structure.
  3. Establish code best practices.
  4. Refactor your source code.
  5. Select a scalable, flexible architecture.

How can we avoid technical debt?

Refactoring, Test-Driven Development, Pair Programming, and Continuous Integration. Learn how these four technical practices can help reduce technical debt and facilitate strong team communication. This article was originally published by the Agile Institute.

Is technical debt good?

Technical debt isn’t inherently bad. But, like financial debt, it can cause serious problems if you don’t pay it back. This is because choosing the easy option over the best one is a short-term fix. In the long term, the weaker option leads to weaker software.