Understanding technical debt

What is the definition of technical debt?

When tackling a project, developers face three primary constraints: time, scope, and cost. These constraints may evolve to align with client needs. Scope and cost may increase. Deadlines may change. To adapt to changing constraints, developers and businesses may make tradeoffs, resulting in deliverables with limited functionality, missing components, or post-project bugs. Over time, the accumulating consequences of these shortcuts create technical debt, with causes including the following:

• Writing poor-quality code: Developers might write poor-quality code when facing tight project deadlines imposed by clients, prioritizing rapid delivery over code quality.
• Insufficient testing: Businesses or developers may undervalue testing efforts due to budget constraints or an urgent need to launch, hoping to address issues later.
• Lack of technical knowledge: Developers with limited expertise may make suboptimal technical decisions when client expectations push for speedy development.
• Rushed development cycles: Developers and businesses may opt for rushed development cycles when clients demand rapid product deployment to gain a competitive edge or meet market demands.

What are the different forms of technical debt?

To address technical debt, developers and businesses have categorized it into various forms based on its nature or how tradeoff consequences impact a project. Common types of technical debt include:

• Intentional debt: Companies intentionally accumulate this debt when they choose to prioritize speedy delivery over code quality, resulting in poor or “dirty” code as they cut corners to meet deadlines.
• Unintentional debt: Teams may inadvertently generate poor code that progresses beyond testing and review processes, giving rise to unintentional technical debt.
• Architecture debt: Architectural debt arises when teams deviate from the product’s original design due to constraints such as tight deadlines.
• Environmental debt: Environmental technical debt accumulates without active code development, leading to increased debt over time.

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Technical debt can be further categorized into various types, including documentation debt, architecture debt, build debt, and people debt. Rushing into software development without adequately preparing systems, processes, and documentation, or adjusting for shifting deadlines can result in developers accumulating different forms of technical debt that could disrupt their projects.

How to prevent technical debt

While technical debt may be inevitable at times to meet client deadlines, there are strategies to minimize it, preventing excessive resource allocation and future project costs. Document instances as they occur so your team can pinpoint their origins and prevent further accumulation. Automate testing processes to minimize the occurrence of undetected bugs and catch issues early. Above all, ensure that qualified developers and coders conduct regular code reviews to proactively identify and prevent unintentional debt, as well as avoid the need to deliberately incur technical debt.

Ensure the long-term success and sustainability of your software projects by managing and reducing technical debt. For more methods to improve project management and productivity, learn more organization tips.