When you cut corners and put off work to finish a job quickly, it is called technical debt. If you incur technical debt and think that you will get back to it later, it might prove fatal for your organization. If you do not have a plan to manage it properly, this debt will become unmanageable and will lead to costly changes which can bring your company to a standstill. You may argue that a little bit of tech debt is okay for a company, but it must be within manageable proportions. You must not ignore it for long but have an active repayment schedule in place instead.
Know It When You See It
The evolutionary state of your company’s development objectives and software architecture is compromised when you ignore technical debt. Committing codes without proper annotations will make it difficult in the future for others to debug your work without rebuilding it altogether. It will lead to accumulation of defects, costlier testing, escaping defects in production and much more. Debt also accrues if you use unsupported, depreciated and outdated technology for efficiency. So, it is better to know it, admit it and address it whenever you see any defects in your code.
Consequences Of A Slippery Slope
Like in life, software companies also have constraints. But as in life you go to the bank and take a loan to pay off your debts with an understanding that you will be able to manage and pay off the loan in the future, you must also do the same when you are developing software. You may have deadlines to meet customer commitments or a temporary issue regarding cash flow, but that does not mean that you will deliver faulty codes. You must have your product management team and developers aligned to provide you an opportunity to do a risk assessment and take a conscious decision about your approach. It becomes a slippery slope which will lead you to a debt trap when you do not have a clearly defined path to complete your task when you commit that short-term debt is payable later.
Effects And Management
The effect that tech debt has on your business is you start delivering slow. While your business grows, poorly maintained codes will lead to longer development, testing and increases the cost of change. There is also a risk as once your software is in use; every change made can have an adverse effect on your business and your customers. It will create a tradeoff usability and customer satisfaction due to the low-quality product delivered with gaps in test coverage and documentation. You can manage it effectively by fostering a culture of accountability and responsibility across all teams, creating organizational awareness about tech debt, documenting and automated testing, addressing backlog as soon as possible and use technology to manage your debt.
A Continuous Effort
Like any debt management, tech debt management is also a continuous effort. To address it you may refactor code, redesign and rework on it, discard legacy codes and start from scratch, and much more to make a conscious and accountable decision. You may check online to know more about the ways of addressing tech debts. Learn about credit card debt consolidation too and grab some information.