Given by Steve Ropa. Using agile and agile tools to manage risk and deliver better software faster.

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Managing Technical
Debt

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Let’s Talk

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What is Technical Debt
• Design Compromises
• Choosing to accept something as “done” before its time

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Technical debt is not always represented by
Defects
public void populateList(String food)
{
Food SelectedFood = new Food();
if(food.equalsIgnoreCase("vegetable"))
{
SelectedFood = new Vegetables();
}
else if(food.contains("Legume"))
{
SelectedFood = new Legume();
}
list.setAdapter(mSchedule);
}

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But it usually results in them

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Is technical debt always bad?
• Just as in finance, sometimes taking on a certain level of
debt can be considered an investment.
– This needs to be a decision that is made proactively, not
reactively

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Is a debt free project even possible?
• Mentality of Sufficiency – Perfect is the natural enemy
of Good

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When might debt be ok?
• New architecture
– Perhaps we want to do our migration to the new architecture one
step at a time. Until we have completed the migration we are
choosing debt
• First to Market
– Sometimes, the monetary effect of being first to market is worth
incurring some debt

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Some common ways to incur debt
• Time pressure
– We don’t have enough time to finish, unless we cut some corners
• Competitive pressure
– If we can at least show this feature, we will beat the competitor
to market

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How might we avoid taking on too much
debt?

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Test Driven Development

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Acknowledging the interest rate
• There is a cost to waiting
• Understand what that cost is and call it out
• Remember that interest compounds

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Paying off inherited debt (legacy code)
• Start small, creating tests around any work we do within
the legacy code base
• We own this debt just as much any debt we choose to
take on.

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Refactoring – paying a little at a time
• All debt has a minimum payment, or “debt service”
• We can pay our debt service through improving the design
whenever we are in our code, without changing the
behavior
– Find a place that could use some improvement
– Wrap the change in tests
– Make the change
– Run the tests
• Its ok to pay a little extra, but don’t go overboard

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Some strategies for spending within your
means
• Keep your stories small
• Only sign up for what you can comfortably accomplish
• Stick to your guns, only agree to debt that you can be
comforatable with

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Don’t take on more than you can pay

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Limited WIP and Kanban
• By constraining how much work we take on at one time
we can focus on quality
• Pull oriented processes mean less incentive to “cram
something in”

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Iterative Development and Velocity
• As we identify a cadence and velocity, we see how much
we really can sign on for
• Tight feedback loops give us room to inspect and adapt

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Pay the Biggest interest items first
• Make debt service on all debt
• As you fix the more expensive items, you are freeing up
resources for the less expensive items later

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Debt Restructuring
• Sometimes, but *very* seldom, we have to declare
bankruptcy – Major Rearchitecture
• A better approach is to create a restructuring plan
• A set of payments (backlog items or defects) that are
scheduled at regular intervals, and with higher priority or
Class of Service than new features

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Alternative ways to consider debt
• Choose a metaphor that resonates
• Not everyone is comfortable with the money theme

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Speedboat
• Our product is a speedboat, heading for an exotic harbor
• Our debt is a set of anchors
– Each anchor has a weight associated with the amount of work
to be done
– Each anchor is a different depth, loosely analogous to how long it
will take to pull the anchor up

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Some basic tips

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Recognize your debt
• Don’t sweep it under the rug
• “It goes without saying” doesn’t

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“Borrow” only when absolutely necessary
• Don’t let It become a habit
• By thinking of it as a necessary evil, we can make it
something that is an exception instead of a rule

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Track debt
• Note the “interest rate”
• Calculate the costs at periodic intervals

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Plan to pay your debt, just like you plan for
new features

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Don’t beat yourself up
• We all borrow
• Sometimes we let our borrowing get away from us
• Recriminations do NOTHING to get the debt paid off

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Remember, you can pay me now, or you can
pay me later…