The Importance of Continually Addressing Tech Debt
Tech debt, or technical debt, occurs when development work accumulates after the release of a product. The name originates from the concept of financial debt, as you might take out a loan in order to reach a goal faster, but then you will need to later repay that debt. Tech debt works similarly, by cutting out certain development protocols prior to a release to help the product release move forward faster. But like debt, the missed development pieces and issues need to be resolved post-release.
Addressing technical debt may seem straightforward, but continuously addressing it within your company is the only way to prevent errors and bugs post-release.
Types of Technical Debt
There are several different kinds of tech debt.
Deliberate Tech Debt
If a project has tight time constraints, then development teams may deliberately release a product with bugs, with the intention of fixing them later. It’s important that teams document when they create technical debt in a backlog so that it can be easily found and repaid in the future. Deliberate tech debt can be very useful, not only for getting a product to market faster but also in terms of getting feedback quicker.
Accumulated Tech Debt
Accumulated tech debt happens when the development team doesn’t fully understand the big picture of a project from the onset and continues to develop in a direction that is not calibrated with the business mission and software solution roadmap.
Natural Tech Debt
Natural tech debt is a type of accumulated debt that happens as businesses, organizations and functional requirements continuously evolve. This creates a situation where the software solution as originally architected for the initial set of requirements may need evolution and refactoring as well, to support new requirements. Product Owners, embracing agile software development process, should anticipate required architecture refactoring and build that into product roadmaps and development timelines so that stakeholder expectations are managed accordingly (in relation to budget and delivery dates).
Bit Rot Tech Debt
Bit rot tech debt occurs when software deteriorates or devolves into hard-to-manage systems. It also occurs when software dependencies such as evolving versions of databases, programming languages, third-party libraries, and third-party APIs are not kept up with. This is usually because several different developers who may not fully understand the project have worked on the code and made small changes. Bit rot tech debt can be avoided by quality software development best practices, strong communications, a team approach, and continuous refactoring (if needed).
Some Causes of Tech Debt
First and foremost, time constraints cause the vast majority of tech debt. External business/stakeholder/market pressure can push development teams to release their product with deliberate tech debt. Other factors can play a part in technical debt as well, such as lack of planning, lack of flexibility and just simply accidental tech debt that hasn’t been detected in the first place. Ultimately, tech debt is usually caused by a focus shift from quality to efficiency which may have short-term benefits but longer-term consequences.
Why Address Tech Debt?
Tech debt can also accumulate ‘interest’ because, as time passes, it becomes harder to make changes later on in the process. It can become both more costly and time-consuming. Moreover, if the technical debt is too big, ‘bankruptcy’ has to be declared. In software, this means a total solution rebuild. So, continuously addressing tech debt is essential. Teams should ideally be working towards new goals and development projects, instead of focusing on the past.
One way of addressing tech debt is through agile process which employs peer code reviews. This facilitates team interaction and quality processes. Automated testing, another agile development practice, is another way to work towards addressing tech debt, as bugs are spotted throughout the testing process.
SRG’s Approach
As a strong partner with our customers, SRG Software collaborates with product owners and stakeholders to identify and track technical debt, and anticipate when problematic issues may arise, so that tech debt is addressed proactively with minimal disruptions and maximum efficiency.
