Technical Debt: Cutting Corners Today, Paying for It Tomorrow

You have an intriguing project idea, which is going to take the market by storm! Sure thing, you want to start implementation as soon as possible. And that’s perfectly understandable. So, you set tight deadlines and push your development team.

However, tapping into implementation at the drop of a hat is not the best choice. You see, by prioritizing only fast delivery, your team may miss crucial steps like testing, debugging, or just write messy code, which can cause havoc.

While fast delivery of a custom solution is preferable, your product quality is of utmost importance. Hence, if you decide to solely focus on fast time to market, you will definitely end up with technical debt.

Well, the word “debt” itself doesn’t bode well, meaning it is going to cause you plenty of headaches. So, how to manage technical debt and reduce the serious consequences it may cause? Let’s jump into our topic to find out.

What Is Technical Debt? Understanding The Metaphor

There are several definitions of technical debt you can come across on the web. But let’s focus on the one suggested by the founder of this term, Ward Cunningham.

Back in 1992, Cunningham was working on the WyStack product and needed to explain to stakeholders how prioritizing speed over quality could become a serious issue in the future, due to the need for resource-intensive code revisions. To make this clear, he compared it to financial debt.

Generally speaking, it helps you move faster in the short term, but the longer you leave it unpaid, the more interest you have to pay. The same applies to code. When you have too many things to adjust, you’ll most likely end up with growing technical debt and may need to open your pocket wider to cover the cost of fixing it.

So, what is technical debt in software development? It’s a budget for maintaining a software system that you know in advance is not perfect. Yes, your team can sort things out somehow and craft some solution with poor code, which could then be hard to fix.

“Shipping first-time code is like going into debt. A little debt speeds development so long as it is paid back promptly with refactoring. The danger occurs when the debt is not repaid.”

— Ward Cunningham, a computer programmer and one of the authors of the Agile Manifesto

The Price of Speed: How Technical Debt Impacts Your Business?

“Haste makes waste!” This wisdom literally describes the impact of tech debt on software implementation. Generally speaking, if you overlook measuring critical factors like quality assurance and security throughout the software development lifecycle, or do not focus on a solid UI/UX, you may end up with a system that struggles with scalability and performance. And maintaining such a solution is neither going to be cheap nor straightforward.

For example, aiming to deliver your warehouse management app right away, your team overlooks unit and integration tests. It leads to code duplication and bugs. Every little change causes some breakages. So, instead of employing new features to expand the app’s functionality, your team wastes precious time on fixing issues.

Additionally, being focused on rapid delivery, your team may miss the documentation part, which will make onboarding new developers slower and more challenging in the future, as they will have no clue how the system works. Obviously, sooner or later, they will figure it out, but it will take time to grasp the intricacies.

All these issues emerge due to the debt you borrow to deliver your solution faster. Now you have launched your product, but you do not have the desired results or satisfied customers, of course. With that being said, you either have to go back to square one or tap into big changes. Both scenarios require extra time and expenses.

Types of Technical Debt: Can You Completely Escape It, or Is It Bound to Happen?

Well, while you may think that everything is clear with tech debt and there can’t be too many variations of such a metaphor to consider, there are. Actually, you can come across 10 types of tech debt on the web. But we truly believe that these two deserve particular attention:

• Intentional: Well, this is the case we’ve already explored. You take that debt on purpose to speed up your product launch. So, your team closes its eyes to some bugs and issues during MVP development with the intention of fixing them later on.
• Unintentional: Your team may not plan to go on with bugs and handle them afterward. However, they may bump into some issues because of numerous factors such as a lack of experience, poor design, wrong tech stack choice, etc.

So, doesn’t it mean that you can’t escape technical debt on the whole? You see, software development is a dynamic process. With tight deadlines, priority shifts, and requirement changes, even highly professional and trustworthy teams may face challenges.

Eventually, not all tech debts are the same. Some can be solved effectively, while others may be much harder to address. The key is how exactly your team conducts the assessment of technical debt and how they plan on minimizing it.

Well, this is a standalone topic, so stick around, and we’ll cover the best technical debt management strategies shortly. But before that, let’s first look at how to identify serious code issues in your system and measure whether they’re turning into a major concern.

Before It’s Too Late: How to Identify Technical Debt in Your System?

You can’t fix what you don’t see, right? And given that tech debt is almost inevitable, it’s critical to detect it in your system early on, so you can manage it promptly. Below are the core steps to assist you along the way:

• Review code: One of the core causes of technical debt is poor-quality and redundant code. So, utilize analytic tools for code reviews. To simplify technical debt evaluation, it’s worth keeping an eye on CodeClimate, SonarQube, and ESLint, which automatically measure metrics such as code complexity, duplication, and maintainability index.
• Document the process: When all changes and past bugs are documented, it becomes much easier to make informed decisions and reduce future issues. This will help your team identify and address areas of technical debt early on.
• Assess system architecture: If parts of your system are overly dependent on one another or your infrastructure is outdated, then you will definitely end up with technical debt. That is because such a system is pretty hard to update, scale, and maintain.
• Collect developer feedback: This helps identify the pain points within your team, allowing you to understand what is slowing down development and which changes should be made to improve your system’s scalability.

When Technical Debt Crosses the Line: How to Measure and Act Before It’s Too Late?

After identifying signs of code issues in your system, it’s the right time to measure how serious the technical debt has become. Let’s zoom in on the core metrics that can pinpoint how much debt your system has accumulated.

• Technical debt ratio (TDR): It measures the average cost of fixing bugs compared to the overall development costs. If the TDR is higher than 20%, it means your tech debt is constantly accumulating. This is the right time to take action before it becomes a bigger headache.
• Issue rate: This metric shows the number of bugs and reported issues in your codebase. If 15% or more of your overall codebase has issues, it‘s a sign of growing debt.
• Change failure rate: With this metric in place, you can calculate the percentage of failed changes or deployments. A failure rate of 16% is already a bad sign.

It’s Time to Settle the Bill! Best Strategies to Reduce Technical Debt

Well, you’ve spotted some code issues in your system, so now it’s time to manage them. Of course, dealing with technical debt is not going to be straightforward, but here are some strategies that will lead to its reduction.

Making regular refactoring an integral part of your development process allows your team to improve the codebase structure, quickly fix issues, and elevate maintainability.

Many businesses, especially those with complex systems, today prefer custom systems to manage technical debt. That is because these solutions provide more options for advanced system performance tracking, real-time insights, and automation specific to their unique needs. As such, businesses can address code issues more effectively, streamline maintenance, and improve overall system scalability.

Balancing Speed and Quality in Your Solution

Covering so many aspects of tech debt, we’re probably on the same page that it’s inevitable, especially when you’re rushing to speed up the product launch. The key is how you address it and prevent further accumulation.

The first and foremost thing you need is a skilled team by your side because they can effectively manage and address code issues, ensuring your project stays on track and maintains high quality.

With many years of proven experience under our belt in providing custom software development services to a wide range of businesses, we know exactly how to deliver your product with optimal speed without compromising its performance.

Feel free to get in touch.