How Do You Manage Technical Debt?
Tackling technical debt is a critical challenge for software professionals, so we've gathered insights from Software Engineers and Technical Leads to share their strategies. From using intentional design to limit tech debt to a four-step approach for managing it, discover the top six methods these experts have successfully implemented in their projects.
- Intentional Design Limits Tech Debt
- Structured Approach to Fintech Debt
- Strategic Debt Management for MVPs
- Technical Debt as a Strategic Tool
- Organize and Prioritize Developer Input
- Four-Step Approach to Technical Debt
Intentional Design Limits Tech Debt
Technical debt is inevitable in any meaningfully large software project. The question usually becomes not how to avoid technical debt entirely, but rather how to manage it effectively.
Being intentional about architectural and design decisions can go a long way in helping limit tech debt down the road—or at the very least, make your codebase more amenable to addressing this tech debt later. Often, I've encountered projects crippled by tech debt, and most of the time, the reason is the same: the team prioritized speed over sustainability to release the project quickly. It's crucial to remember that it's generally easier to spend extra time upfront planning the project well rather than spending a lot of time after a project's release addressing accumulated tech debt.
When starting work on any meaningfully large project, I consider the following:
1. Requirements Analysis: What are the requirements, and is my solution addressing all of them comprehensively?
2. Extensibility: Is my system designed in a way that allows for easy extension? (This often helps significantly in reducing future technical debt!)
3. Simplification: What can I simplify in my design without sacrificing any of the requirements? (It's surprising how often you can cut complexity from your initial design when you intentionally look for areas to simplify.)
Remember, the goal is not to completely eliminate technical debt from a project but to find an acceptable balance that doesn't allow it to become a disruption. By being proactive and thoughtful in your approach, you can manage technical debt effectively and maintain a healthy, sustainable codebase.
Structured Approach to Fintech Debt
Managing technical debt is a critical aspect of maintaining a healthy codebase and ensuring long-term project sustainability. We approach technical debt by prioritizing regular code reviews, refactoring sessions, and maintaining a clear technical debt register. This register helps us track and prioritize debt items based on their impact on system performance, scalability, and maintainability.
In a recent project for a fintech client, we encountered significant technical debt that had accumulated from the client’s rapid feature development to meet market demands. To manage this, we implemented a structured approach tailored to their specific needs:
Assessment and Prioritization: We conducted a comprehensive code audit for the client to identify areas with high technical debt. This involved assessing code complexity, identifying outdated libraries, and pinpointing performance bottlenecks. We then worked with the client to prioritize these issues based on their potential impact on the system and user experience.
Dedicated Refactoring Sprints: We scheduled dedicated sprints focused solely on addressing the client’s technical debt. During these sprints, our team worked on refactoring critical sections of the codebase, updating dependencies, and improving overall code quality. This ensured that technical debt reduction did not disrupt the client’s regular feature development.
Continuous Improvement: We helped the client adopt a continuous improvement mindset by integrating technical debt management into their regular development process. This included setting aside a portion of each sprint for refactoring and technical debt tasks, ensuring that debt was addressed incrementally rather than allowing it to accumulate.
Automated Testing and Code Reviews: We enhanced the client’s automated testing framework to cover more code paths and implemented stricter code review processes. This reduced the introduction of new technical debt and ensured that refactored code met high-quality standards.
By systematically addressing the client’s technical debt through these strategies, we improved the stability and performance of their project. This proactive approach not only enhanced the client’s system scalability and maintainability but also improved their team’s productivity and ability to deliver robust fintech solutions to their users.
Strategic Debt Management for MVPs
I approach technical debt as an engineering challenge, recognizing its inevitability in software development. My strategy includes:
1. Documenting debt as it occurs (code comments, tickets, backlog)
2. Prioritizing based on impact (performance, maintainability, scalability)
3. Allocating time in sprints for debt repayment
4. Educating stakeholders on debt's business impact
5. Implementing best practices (coding standards, reviews, automated testing)
Our project:
For a web app MVP, we incurred planned debt to meet deadlines. Post-launch, we:
1. Documented shortcuts
2. Prioritized debt items
3. Allocated 20% of sprint time to debt repayment
4. Communicated the importance to stakeholders
5. Implemented stricter code reviews and quality checks
Over two months, we cleared high-priority debt, improving the codebase's maintainability and reducing production bugs. This experience reinforced the importance of ongoing debt management rather than one-time fixes.
Technical Debt as a Strategic Tool
At dOrg, we view technical debt as a strategic tool that enables early-stage blockchain startups to rapidly enter the market. It's crucial to balance this debt, as paying it off too early can exhaust resources, while allowing it to accrue too long can hinder progress. For example, we assisted a blockchain startup by implementing a tracking system to manage their technical debt. This allowed them to prioritize and address critical issues incrementally, maintaining development velocity and reducing defects over time, which led to a more robust and scalable product.
Organize and Prioritize Developer Input
Managing technical debt starts with open communication with developers to capture any and all suggestions to improve the infrastructure, as well as to better understand underlying risks. Once input is collected, it is critical to structure and organize the recommendations in the backlog so that it is easily navigable. I then schedule a 'spring-cleaning sprint' where I allow developers the autonomy to identify and pull in tickets to work on (matching specific criteria, if needed). The frequency of the 'spring-cleaning sprint' is dependent on other priorities, but I will schedule them no less than once per quarter to ensure we are making progress on resolving technical debt tickets.
Four-Step Approach to Technical Debt
My team and I at TrackingMore take a straightforward four-step approach to technical debt. The process starts with assessing and identifying the technical debt, prioritizing it, planning and executing refactoring, and continuously monitoring and improving based on feedback and performance metrics.
An example of this approach was the realization that TrackingMore’s shipment tracking feature was performing slowly at one point. Because of frequent bugs, the user experience was negative.
We audited TrackingMore’s codebase and realized that our technical debt arose from rapid feature development to stay competitive in our market. We prioritized the shipment tracking function based on the effort required and its impact on customer experience.
What followed was planning the process of refactoring the shipment tracking module to improve its performance and readability. We agreed on a formula to integrate this process into our regular sprint planning, with 25% of the available time dedicated to it.
As the refactoring process continued, we implemented automated testing for technical debt to ensure that no new debt would arise from any future changes we made to the shipment tracking function module. We also formulated a way to review the team’s progress regularly and adjusted our approach based on developer feedback and performance metrics.
