Tech debt is something which most technical resources are unaware of and do not have a strategic plan to pay it off either. In fact, it occurs in various places and in most cases you are even unaware of its existence. Therefore, it continues to play its part, infect the entire code base and slowly and surely threatens your company’s existence. There are a lot of opportunities for such debt to occur. Some experts term tech debt as prudent and reckless while some as deliberate and inadvertent, depending on the type and place of existence. It is good to review its existence from time to time so that you know about its attributes and have strategic plans formulated to address it.
Signs Of Tech Debt
There are no significant sign or symptom of which you can say that tech debt is there. However, professionals admit that tech debt is bound to exist and thereby be prepared to tackle it. You can consider the existence of tech debt when you notice any unrealistic schedules or any scope creep in the building of the feature. It may also exist when inexperienced resources are involved in building it with few code moments and lack of code reviewing. You can also have tech debt in a feature when there is little use of patterns or proper framework, lack of professionalism and poor preparation, unrefined requirements, quick completion of the job and much more.
Danger Creeps In Later
Just like tech debt cannot be identified easily, the danger of it cannot be felt easily either. You may feel satisfied when a quickly released code works fine, but there is no reason to believe that it will work as finely as ever and the customers will accept it forever. Tech debt accumulates over time, and an excess quantity of it will make the code unalterable and unscaleable. You will then require specialized programmers, pay a huge amount of money, dedicate a lot of time and effort to get it refactored to work again in an acceptable manner.
All Debts Are Not Bad
Just like financial debt, all tech debt are not bad. When it is within manageable limits, it speeds up development with the prompt rewrite. The objects make the cost of such transaction tolerable, but the danger starts when such payments are not made or delayed. Every minute spent thereby increases the interest on the debt which can bring the entire code to a standstill. Longer the time it is left unaddressed, harder it becomes to rework on it.
Pay It Off Early
Therefore, bad tech debt needs to be paid off at all costs. Any design which is questionable needs to be looked into, any untested code requires testing and all shortcomings in the infrastructure needs to be rectified so that your company survives. Click here to know how to pay off tech debt. Therefore, retrospection is the only way to deal with tech debt and any agile development team will have its own way to identify, address and fix the faulty code. Such an approach will help you to find out what is going on well and what needs to be considered seriously.
