Ivan Seibel’s Post

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐈𝐦𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐓𝐞𝐜𝐡𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐃𝐞𝐛𝐭 𝐌𝐚𝐧𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭: 𝐀 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐮𝐨𝐮𝐬 𝐑𝐞𝐬𝐩𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 Technical debt occurs when teams prioritize quick solutions over long-term stability, leading to issues like messy code, outdated libraries, and unresolved bugs. While it can be a strategic choice to meet deadlines, ignoring it for too long increases maintenance costs and slows future development, just like accumulating interest on financial debt. 𝐔𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐓𝐞𝐜𝐡𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐃𝐞𝐛𝐭 Technical debt can manifest in several forms—unoptimized code, outdated libraries, lack of documentation, or unaddressed bugs. It arises when development teams choose speed over a more sustainable, well-engineered solution. The decision to incur technical debt might be strategic, especially in high-pressure environments where delivering a product quickly is essential. However, the longer it remains unmanaged, the more costly it becomes to address. 𝑳𝒊𝒌𝒆 𝒇𝒊𝒏𝒂𝒏𝒄𝒊𝒂𝒍 𝒅𝒆𝒃𝒕, 𝒕𝒆𝒄𝒉𝒏𝒊𝒄𝒂𝒍 𝒅𝒆𝒃𝒕 𝒊𝒏𝒄𝒖𝒓𝒔 "𝒊𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒆𝒔𝒕". 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐨𝐬𝐭𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐈𝐠𝐧𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐓𝐞𝐜𝐡𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐃𝐞𝐛𝐭 When technical debt is ignored, the impact on software systems becomes increasingly problematic. Slower performance, reduced flexibility, and difficulty in scaling systems are common consequences. Teams may spend excessive time fixing bugs and maintaining fragile code rather than focusing on value-driven features. Moreover, high levels of technical debt can affect team morale, as developers become frustrated with the ongoing struggle to work within a messy codebase. For companies, this results in higher operational costs, delayed product updates, and potentially a loss of competitive edge. 𝐒𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐌𝐚𝐧𝐚𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐓𝐞𝐜𝐡𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐃𝐞𝐛𝐭 Managing technical debt requires a proactive and continuous approach. The key strategies include: 𝑹𝒆𝒈𝒖𝒍𝒂𝒓 𝑪𝒐𝒅𝒆 𝑹𝒆𝒗𝒊𝒆𝒘𝒔: Establish a culture of frequent, thorough code reviews to identify potential areas of technical debt early. Allocate Time for Refactoring: Ensure that each development cycle includes time to address and reduce technical debt through refactoring and code optimization. 𝑷𝒓𝒊𝒐𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒊𝒛𝒆 𝑫𝒆𝒃𝒕: Not all technical debt needs to be tackled immediately. Prioritize addressing debt that has the most impact on performance and scalability. 𝑪𝒐𝒍𝒍𝒂𝒃𝒐𝒓𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝑨𝒄𝒓𝒐𝒔𝒔 𝑻𝒆𝒂𝒎𝒔: Encourage cross-functional collaboration between developers, product managers, and stakeholders to balance feature development with long-term technical sustainability. 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐜𝐥𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧 By proactively addressing it, Investing in this effort ensures that short-term gains do not lead to long-term setbacks. #TechnicalDebt #TechStrategy #ContinuousImprovement #ProductivityBoost

How To Deal With Technical Debt 1. Code quality — our code could be clearer to understand. There are no coding standards, it’s poorly designed, and there is a lot of complexity. In addition, there are a lot of code comments explaining what something does. 2. Testing — we need a proper testing approach (check Test Pyramid), from unit tests to integration to E2E tests. Coupling — between modules that block each other increases the time to deal with such code. 3. Out-of-date Libraries or Tools — we are using some legacy libraries or tools with several issues, such as security or inability to update to new technologies and platforms. We, as developers, always want to work with the most up-to-date technologies and efficient tools. 4. Manual Process — some processes in our delivery need to be automated. No automated builds, no CI/CD process. 5. Wrong or no architecture — we don’t have proper architecture, or it’s just a big ball of mud. Our architecture doesn’t reflect what we want to achieve with our system, or it doesn’t scale well. 6. Lack of Documentation — there is no documentation, or it’s not updated to reflect the system’s current state. 7. Lack of Knowledge Sharing — we don’t have a culture of knowledge sharing, so it isn’t easy for newcomers to get up to speed. We should always document our decisions and specifications during our work. https://lnkd.in/dqdmByKf

"Don't let Technical Debt sabotage your product roadmap. Claim back your share of the $85 billion loss from bad code." 🛠️ Want to share my recent writing with you before I move on to my summer holidays: Technical debt is more than a technical issue - it's a business problem. It hinders development speed, increases defects, and leads to unpredictable delivery timelines. Here's why making technical debt visible and addressing it should be a priority 🔗 Read the full article here: https://lnkd.in/e3QWJ3Yc 📉 Low Code Quality is Costly: Development in low-quality code is 124% slower and has 15 times more defects than high-quality code. The inefficiency leads to an astounding $300 billion annual loss in global GDP! ⌛ Unplanned Work Drain: Organizations waste 23-42% of development time on unplanned work due to technical debt, resulting in an $85 billion annual productivity loss. This impacts customer satisfaction, business opportunities, and employee morale. 📊 Strategic Business Concern: Measuring and addressing technical debt is crucial. Quantifying its impact allows organizations to make data-driven decisions to prioritize refactoring efforts. 🤖 AI Coding Assistants: These tools can accelerate development and reduce defects but come with potential risks like over-reliance and errors. The motivation for this blog post came from discussions with one of our teams struggling to convince management to invest in refactoring. They face significant challenges due to technical debt but haven’t found a way to make management see its importance. With this series, I want to help teams create a business case for addressing technical debt. 🧠 Take Action: Recognize technical debt as a strategic business concern and take proactive measures to address it. If you're dealing with similar issues, share your experiences in the comments! The data points I refer to are based on insights from two great papers by CodeScene, mixed with my personal experiences and thoughts, as well as data from a Stripe study on developer efficiency. References in the comments.

Technical debt (or tech debt) refers to the concept in software development where developers take shortcuts or make decisions that are expedient in the short term but may have negative consequences in the long term. These decisions often result in code that is less than optimal, harder to maintain, or more prone to bugs and errors. The term "debt" is used because, like financial debt, these shortcuts can accumulate interest over time, making future development and maintenance more costly and time-consuming. Types of Technical Debt ------------------------ Code Debt: Poorly written or unoptimized code that needs to be refactored. Design Debt: Architectural or design decisions that hinder scalability or flexibility. Testing Debt: Inadequate testing or lack of test coverage. Documentation Debt: Insufficient or outdated documentation. Causes of Technical Debt -------------------------- Pressure to meet deadlines: Rushed development can lead to suboptimal code. Lack of expertise: Developers might make poor decisions due to inexperience. Changing requirements: As project requirements evolve, initial design choices may no longer be suitable. Temporary fixes: Quick fixes or hacks intended to solve immediate problems without considering long-term impacts. Managing Technical Debt -------------------------- Regular Refactoring: Continuously improving code quality and structure. Code Reviews: Ensuring that code meets quality standards through peer reviews. Automated Testing: Increasing test coverage and reliability of the codebase. Documentation: Keeping documentation up-to-date to help future developers understand the code. Prioritization: Balancing new feature development with addressing technical debt. Consequences of Ignoring Technical Debt ------------------------------------------ Increased Maintenance Costs: Harder and more time-consuming to add new features or fix bugs. Decreased Performance: Suboptimal code can lead to slower performance and higher resource consumption. Lower Developer Morale: Working with messy, hard-to-understand code can frustrate developers. Reduced Product Quality: Higher chances of bugs and issues in the software.

Technical Debt: The Silent Killer of Software Products While your product may appear shiny on the surface, technical debt can be the slow poison that leads to its demise. Research suggests that over five years, technical debt for a million lines of code can cost $1.5 million, equivalent to 27,500 developer hours. So, how can management identify if their product is drowning in technical debt? Here are some red flags: Bug Busters: The development team is constantly fighting fires, spending most of their time fixing bugs and applying patches instead of building new features or improvements. Testing Tightrope: Automated testing is non-existent or requires significant code refactoring, making it difficult or impossible to ensure quality and catch regressions. Shifting Sands: Business requirements fluctuate mid-development, causing disruption and rework. Change is Slow: Implementing even minor changes takes an excessive amount of time, often requiring architectural overhauls. Knowledge Siloed: The team relies heavily on specific individuals, creating a single point of failure and hindering process-driven development. Ignoring technical debt is like ignoring a leaky roof. It may not cause immediate collapse, but it will eventually lead to demise of the company. By recognizing these signs and taking proactive measures to address technical debt, companies can ensure the long-term health and sustainability of their products. https://lnkd.in/g6K88UrZ #technicaldebt #cleancode #designpatterns

If you don't measure #TechDebt, how are you planning to pay it down? Let's get real about technical debt... The problem with that term is that it is based on the perception of your engineering team. "Perception" is what makes this very tricky because some days you think your database architecture is the worst thing in the world, and other days you think your dependency freshness is the worst thing in the world. That's why I always recommend that engineering teams get together and discuss their own definition of #TechnicalDebt: - "What's a code smell (according to our definition)? Which code smells are truly bad and non-negotiable? Which are we fine with?" - "When does dependency freshness become a problem? How far behind can we allow ourselves to be?" - "How much complexity are we okay with? How many files can live in the problematic area of the churn vs. complexity graph?" - "What is our baseline definition of #CodeQuality? What is 'bad code' and what is 'tech debt' according to our experience building and maintaining our application?" Once you've achieved consensus, you can document it and agree as a team. This will save you time down the line. You can always go back to these definitions and assess whether you're acquiring "too much technical debt" or not. That's why I love the idea of a "Technical Debt Maturity Model" to understand the situation around technical debt in an application and/or organization 👉 https://lnkd.in/eHj8Y8yM Remember, if you can't measure it, you can't manage it... #SoftwareMaintenance

How do you balance the need for rapid development and innovation with the potential consequences of accumulating technical debt? What criteria do you use to determine when it's appropriate to take on technical debt? We have some answers too. Check out the April blog! #DevOps #TechDebt

How do you balance the need for rapid development and innovation with the potential consequences of accumulating technical debt? What criteria do you use to determine when it's appropriate to take on technical debt? We have some answers too. Check out the April blog! #DevOps #TechDebt

If your technical debt is under control, you can stop reading now. Now that I still have ALL of you. I have been thinking recently about the problem's cognitive part. We know that every process is just a layer on top of the most influential factor - humans. As a result, I came up with some reasons why introducing the “right tech debt culture” might be difficult from a human-engineer perspective: 👉 Immediate Gratification - We might prefer to work on new features and visible enhancements rather than addressing technical debt, which usually doesn't show immediate visible results. Understanding the value behind keeping your code healthy is critical to confront this one. 👉 Cognitive Dissonance - We may feel discomfort when recognizing that our past decisions have led to technical debt. Admitting that the codebase has flaws can lead to avoidance. This one comes in as contradictory to the next, but equally valid.  👉 Short-transactional relationship: With the average employment cycle dropping below 2 years, and the rise of the freelance model, it seems to be less important to think about the “future you” that will face the low health code produced today.  👉 Sunk Cost Fallacy: We might resist refactoring parts of the codebase because of the significant time and effort already invested in the existing code, even when it's clear that addressing the debt is necessary in the long term. 👉 Cognitive distortion: We might fear big things that are more daunting in our imagination than in reality. Refactoring a large piece in a complex system, while avoiding new issues, and keeping it working might be paralyzing. A visualization of small steps progress and an understanding that refactoring is a circular, not big-upfront, process are essential.   👉 Confirmation Bias: We might downplay the importance of technical debt or rationalize it to avoid the uncomfortable truth. We may focus on information that confirms their belief that the debt is not as problematic as it might be. 👉 Org Culture: If the org culture prioritizes new features and quick delivery over code quality and long-term maintainability, technical debt might be neglected. Performance short-term output metrics (like the number of new features) rather than long-term code health also discourage addressing technical debt. 👉 Lack of Knowledge: Not everyone fully understands the concept of technical debt and its implications. This lack of understanding can lead to undervaluing the importance of addressing it.  👉 Overconfidence: We may believe that our current practices are sufficient and that our skills are adequate to deal with the codebase as it is, leading to underestimation of the negative impact of technical debt. 👉 Lack of Ownership: When no one feels personally responsible for the technical debt, it is easily ignored. This can happen in orgs with diffused code ownership or where there is a high turnover of staff (see p.3). How you are dealing with those? What did i miss?

TECHNICAL DEBT: Understanding the Good and the Bad What is Technical Debt? Technical debt refers to the cumulative consequences of taking shortcuts or making compromises during the software development process to expedite delivery.  These shortcuts typically involve trading off long-term code quality, maintainability, or scalability for short-term gains in speed or functionality. In the world of software development, technical debt is a term that's both feared and embraced.    However, technical debt comes with its fair share of benefits and drawbacks. ➡ Today, my post will delve into the good and the bad aspects of technical debt. The Good: ▶ Rapid Development:  By cutting corners or postponing certain tasks, developers can deliver products to market faster, meeting tight deadlines or seizing market opportunities. ▶ Prototyping and Experimentation: It allows developers to test ideas quickly and gather feedback from users before investing significant resources in fully implementing a feature or product. ▶ Flexibility and Adaptability: It enables developers to pivot swiftly in response to evolving user needs or market demands without being bogged down by overly rigid structures. ▶ Learning Opportunities: It helps developers understand the consequences of certain design decisions and encourages them to continuously refine their skills and practices. The Bad: ⏹ Accumulating Interest: Just like financial debt, technical debt accumulates interest over time.  What starts as a temporary shortcut can turn into a significant burden, requiring more time and effort to address in the future. ⏹ Decreased Productivity:  Developers may find themselves spending more time fixing bugs, addressing technical issues, or navigating convoluted code rather than implementing new features or improvements. ⏹ Quality Compromises: Shortcuts taken during development may result in poorly structured code, increased complexity, and decreased maintainability, making it harder to extend or modify the software in the future. ⏹ Risk of Systemic Issues:   These issues may manifest as performance bottlenecks, security vulnerabilities, or scalability limitations, posing significant risks to the stability and reliability of the product. 🔔 While technical debt can be a powerful tool for innovation and agility, it's essential to manage it judiciously to avoid its detrimental effects.  In conclusion, by understanding its nuances and employing proactive strategies for management and mitigation, development teams can harness the benefits of technical debt while minimizing its negative impact on software quality and long-term sustainability. #SujataSays #continouslearning #continousimprovement