Visualising and Prioritizing Technical Debt

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Whether we know it or not, we probably have technical debt in our codebase! And the longer we keep it, the more problems it creates. So let’s get rid of it. But where do we start?

So, what is technical debt again? Let’s have a look what Martin Fowler has to say about it:

Technical Debt is a wonderful metaphor developed by Ward Cunningham to help us think about this problem. In this metaphor, doing things the quick and dirty way sets us up with a technical debt, which is similar to a financial debt. Like a financial debt, the technical debt incurs interest payments, which come in the form of the extra effort that we have to do in future development because of the quick and dirty design choice. We can choose to continue paying the interest, or we can pay down the principal by refactoring the quick and dirty design into the better design. Although it costs to pay down the principal, we gain by reduced interest payments in the future.

Here is the full article for your reading pleasure.

At a given point in time, it might make sense for us to create some technical debt. After all, it will…