{"id":855,"date":"2023-10-08T20:35:27","date_gmt":"2023-10-08T15:05:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nocturnalknight.co\/?p=855"},"modified":"2023-10-08T20:35:27","modified_gmt":"2023-10-08T15:05:27","slug":"how-to-manage-technical-debt-in-2023-a-guide-for-leadership","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nocturnalknight.com\/?p=855","title":{"rendered":"How to Manage Technical Debt in 2023: A Guide for Leadership"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In this article, I will summarise effective strategies and best practices to tackle tech debt head-on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Technical debt is an inevitable reality in software development. But, it can be leveraged just like a financial loan\/debt can help you achieve your goals, if managed properly.
It can be used to drive competitive advantage by allowing companies to launch new products and features faster, experiment with new technologies, and improve the scalability and performance of their systems. However, like all loans, it need to be “Repaid” properly and at the right time, failing on it will create a downward spiral.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you’re not careful, technical debt can quickly become a major burden that slows down development and makes it difficult to add new features or even fix bugs in a timely manner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We will discuss how to identify technical debt and the signs of poorly managed debt, and then provide a strategy for reducing it. We will also discuss what a healthy level of technical debt looks like and how leaders can use it to their advantage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Good Tech Debt Vs Bad Tech Debt<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Robert Kiyosaki, the author of Rich Dad Poor Dad<\/a>, famously said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Bad debt takes money out of your pocket, while good debt puts money in your pocket.<\/em><\/p>\n– Robert Kiyosaki<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The same is true of tech debt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Technical debt is the cost of not doing things the right way the first time. Good technical debt is accrued when you make trade-offs to meet deadlines or deliver new features quickly.<\/span> Bad technical debt is accrued when you make poor decisions or cut corners.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bad tech debt will probably make your PMs, Sales and CEO happy for a quarter or two. But after that, they will be asking why everything is behind schedule and dealing with customer complaints because things aren\u2019t working properly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Now that I have presented the obvious in a familiar “Quadrant”, you can actually skip the terminologies and definitions part of this article! \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For my verbal brethren, Which is the Tech Debt you’d need to ruthlessly hunt down to extinction? Obviously, it is the untracked, undocumented ones. And the ones which are dragging your team on a downward spiral (immaterial of whether it is tracked or not) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why does your Tech Debt keep accumulating?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Before we can think about building a strategy to solve tech debt, we need to understand how it gets out of control in the first place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s called “impact visibility”.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fixing code debt issues is impossible if:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1, You\u2019ve no record of what technical debt issues you have<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2, You\u2019ve got a backlog, but you can\u2019t see which issues are related to what code<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In both cases, you can\u2019t prioritise tech debt over shipping new features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We need to get more granular about what impacts these two tech debt cases above.<\/p>\n\n\n\n