Due to time, budget, or other constraints, the software development team picks simple or speedy solutions to quickly provide short-term projects.
These methods, on the other hand, are unreliable for long-term goals, usually causing bugs or security concerns, and necessitating further effort to resolve them later.
According to a Mckinsey poll, 10-20% of the entire energy budget is set aside to address technical debt difficulties.
Furthermore, the amount of tech debt is believed to be 20-40% of the total worth of the technology. This can amount to hundreds of millions of dollars in unpaid debt for larger companies.
What is Technical Debt?
Because metaphor has a natural openness to it, software developers fight over the technical debt metaphor. The tech debt metaphor was first used by Ward Cunningham, the creator of the first wiki and co-author of the agile manifesto.
Since originally utilizing the metaphor decades ago, Cunningham has expanded on it. He reveals in one of his most popular videos from 2009 that
with borrowed money, you can do something sooner than you might otherwise… I thought borrowing money was a good idea, I thought that rushing software out the door to get some experience with it was a good idea, but that of course, you would eventually go back and as you learned things about that software you would repay that loan by refactoring the program to reflect your experience as you require it.
As a result, we can conclude that technical debt is unavoidable and that many development teams acquire it for good reasons.
What causes Technical Debt?
There are a number of important reasons for technical debt, and not all of them are caused by your team’s development decisions.
Development shortcuts
Saving time by not fully customizing code, reducing code performance, or making another bad tradeoff are examples of these reasons.
Obsolescent technology or approach
Because your technology has become obsolete or your business has outgrown it, your technology choices no longer meet your needs.
Considered, planned decisions
It was formed as a consequence of a deliberate decision and for the benefit of your organization.
Although technical debt may not benefit your firm as a whole, it frequently appears because it provides temporary benefits. Teams who allow technical debt to spring up in their code are typically able to accomplish their work sooner, allowing them to move on rapidly to the next project, similar to how financial debt delivers certain benefits now that pay off later.
How to manage Technical Debt?
As early as you become aware of your tech debt, make sure you consistently take other steps to reduce it. By McKinsey estimates, companies who are proactive with tech debt management manage to minimize their TD from 75% to 25%. So, you too should get to the action!
Here is a list of some of the most utilized techniques for managing technical debt
Understand that you have debt
Companies may have technical debt without realizing it or benefitting from it. There are times when this debt is beneficial, and other times when it is no longer useful and should be reduced to improve the software. The sooner you recognize that you have debt, the easier it will be to pay it off.
Define a timeframe and activities to mitigate tech debt
Realizing the problem at once is not the end of the solution process.
Take action, as repaying technical debt necessitates consistency in terms of time, money, and effort.
Because there are no one-size-fits-all criteria for tracking or measuring technical debt, you can try developing a to-do list and setting aside time to work on it. It also helps to standardize the process of deciding how and when to handle TD actions. IT departments and business leaders are more likely to collaborate and address conflicts of interest when these methods are used.
Some corporations go beyond simple planning in their fight against technical debt, creating entire departments comprised of architects whose mission it is to resolve the technical debt.
Establish quality code standards and reviews
Poor code quality is one of the most common causes of unwelcome technical debt. However, the cause is not incompetent developers, but rather a lack of code quality standards. As a result, adopting minimal quality requirements will ensure that your code quality remains high, reducing technical debt.
Automated testing
Using software tools to find defects and errors in the system, double-check the code, and confirm the product’s quality is what automated testing is all about. Along with their regular development efforts, software developers and professional QA engineers are typically responsible for automated testing.
Automation modifies quality controls by eliminating the need for manual testing, which speeds up problem identification and reduces the risk of human error. Automated tests can allow QA teams to focus on more delicate issues that require human involvement. Automated testing eliminates technological debt by speeding up the bug identification process and reducing human involvement.
Refactoring
It’s the process of reorganizing jumbled code to make it more comprehensible, maintainable, and bug-free. Assisting with the transformation of legacy code, this method is an important aspect of modernization and tech debt payback. One of the few strategies to keep technical debt to a low is to use small refactoring on a regular basis. Refactoring results in cleaner code, which makes future refactoring tasks easier. As a result, you might think of this as an investment in your future fight against TD.
Conclusion
Stellar Digital can assist your company in achieving the ideal mix of controlling and minimizing technical debt. Our knowledge in software development services, as well as cloud adoption, security issue detection, building, and many other areas, will assist in identifying underlying code issues, resulting in lower technical debt.
