Comments on: Does A Mess Constitute Technical Debt?

By: Kris Hardy

Kris Hardy — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 15:44:40 +0000

Agreed.

I’ve run into really nasty situations myself. First, a client has a serious technical debt that was handed to me to manage. The debt is so massive, he would have actually been better off writing-off the debt and starting a brand new development project from the ground up.

Now, the client wasn’t interested in doing that. They don’t understand anything about architecture or development, they just want to add new functionality to their current software as quickly (and cheaply) as possible.

In that case, unfortunately, you have 2 choices… You hack in the improvements as cleanly as you can, or you walk away. And I have done both.

However, walking away sometimes isn’t a viable option, and you’re stuck doing debt control. It sucks, but sometimes it’s unavoidable.

By: Brandon Savage

Brandon Savage — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 06:31:34 +0000

It’s completely possible to inherit technical debt, that’s for sure. I know I’ve inherited technical debt many times. However, the accrual of new technical debt in a project is generally not accidental, but a choice.

By: Samuel Folkes

Samuel Folkes — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 06:22:54 +0000

I have to agree with Chris here. Inheriting technical debt is increasingly becoming a problem for developers, particularly when working on projects being managed by technically inept project managers. I’ve had to walk away from several projects where managers just want the system to work with little or no regard for important aspects of development such as application security and API documentation. To them ignorance is bliss. In many scenarios the debt isn’t accidental nor is it unavoidable. Its simply not acknowledged.

By: chris

chris — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 05:43:11 +0000

Accidentally? No…but it’s still possible to inherit technical debt. It’s never a fun situation when you drop into a job and there’s already this huge mess to deal with (especially if you’re the one tasked with cleaning it up).

It’s sad that deadlines are such a deciding factor in so much of the software development done these days, but there are things you can do to help minimize the effects of them like making code easily extensible and working with modules and fight the urge to hard-code.