Comments on: Paying Down Technical Debt

By: Technische Schulden « devkid

Technische Schulden « devkid — Fri, 01 May 2009 09:53:56 +0000

[...] dieper in op het onderwerp en geeft tips in hoe men deze schuld tot een minimum kan herleiden. Ook Brandon gaat hier dieper op in en geeft zijn 5 technieken in hoe hij als ontwikkelaar zijn technische [...]

By: On Code Commenting And Technical Debt | BrandonSavage.net

On Code Commenting And Technical Debt | BrandonSavage.net — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 16:40:08 +0000

[...] Failure to comment is simply the accrual of technical debt. [...]

By: Ryan Kohn

Ryan Kohn — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 16:01:26 +0000

“Try and keep the entries short”

This is good advice, but it’s more powerful when combined with the partner advice to make the entries action-oriented. “build new button for feature X” is a better record than “button on X”.

Adding additional details on the nature of the debt is like increasing the down payment on a loan. Having full detail (i.e. a fully-implemented feature) is making the payment in full. The other end of the spectrum is not paying anything down up front (i.e. not recording the debt at all), which will maximize the interest you have to pay on it.

Along the same line as Bill Karwin’s story, having a plan for implementation is a good way to increase the down payment on the debt. Minimizing the amount of the debt you take is a sound investment strategy, so record as much detail as is reasonable about the technical debt you take.

I’ve written a bit about this:
http://ryan.kohn.ca/articles/how-to-take-a-break-when-programming.php

By: Tony Arkles

Tony Arkles — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 12:59:50 +0000

Web apps change the situation a bit: when you “declare bankruptcy” on a web app, you get the opportunity to switch code bases without having existing customers continuing to use your old code base for eternity.

By: Brandon Savage

Brandon Savage — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 21:16:53 +0000

I think you’re 100% right. Thank you for sharing that story. It’s true – you should not intentionally incur technical debt unless you have the ability to pay it off.

The problem is that technical debt you incur unintentionally. Hopefully you have a strategy for getting out of that, too. Unlike real debt where you must sign a promissory note, unplanned technical debt can bankrupt you quickly and is largely unavoidable.

By: Bill Karwin

Bill Karwin — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 21:04:51 +0000

I’d argue that like real-world debt, there is a way to use technical debt judiciously. Just make sure (a) you’re getting something for it, and (b) you have a plan for managing it and getting out of debt.

I was at a company where we had to get our product working for a demo the next day. But one of the features had an intractable bug, and everyone was stressing about the deadline. I said, “hard-code the feature for now, go do the demo, and then when we return from the demo you can finish the feature without stress.” It worked — because we actually had the plan and the priority to pay off that technical debt. And we had a successful demo by incurring that debt.