How to avoid Tech Debt?

This article is brought to you by Brainboard’s growth team! Authored by Mike Tyson of the Cloud // Reviewed by Ben, Tarak // Last edited on the 18th of June 2023

10 min readJun 15, 2023

If you’re an engineer and your first question hitting this article is ‘what is technical debt anyway? Never heard of it’, this article is a must read.

For the purpose of this post, technical debt is defined as anything that hinders the agility of a product as it evolves. This can include code-related issues, as well as deficiencies in test automation and DevOps practices.

Tldr;

What is Technical Debt?
What are Causes & Consequences of Technical Debt
How to Avoid and Minimize Technical Debt
Top 7 Reduction Strategies to Manage Technical Debt

What is technical debt?

Making Tech Debt Visible

What is technical debt? It can be understood as the software equivalent of financial debt. When you build software, you accrue debt, similar to buying a house. However, unlike a bank loan with clear monthly statements, technical debt does not have a tangible form.

Technical debt primarily exists within the code, infrastructure, or third-party services of your product, expressed in technical terms.
One common characteristic of most technical debt is its limited lifetime. Just like physical assets, code in software has a certain lifespan and eventually needs to be modified or replaced.
As a team member, dealing with technical debt can be highly frustrating. It always seems to surface at inconvenient times, just like death and taxes.
It’s important to note that technical debt is distinct from undone work. Undone work is placed in the Product Backlog, while technical debt refers to anything that impedes agility in the product’s development.

The two types of technical dept

Technical debt emerges as a result of workarounds and human errors in software engineering, often driven by factors such as time constraints and skill gaps.

Intentional technical debt (also known as deliberate or active) arises when a team consciously postpones resolving certain issues in order to achieve a specific goal, such as releasing an update more quickly.
Unintentional technical debt (also referred to as accidental, outdated, or passive) occurs when a team unknowingly accumulates numerous issues by performing substandard work.

Intentional Tech Dept vs. Unintentional Tech Debt

It’s important to note that technical debt is not always detrimental, especially if you have the necessary resources, knowledge, and time to address it in the future. Deliberately incurring technical debt often involves prioritizing business requirements over technological considerations.

22 causes of Technical Dept

“Every minute dedicated to imperfect code accumulates interest on that debt.” Technical debt presents us with a choice: we can opt to keep paying the interest, which slows us down over time, or we can reduce the principal by refactoring the initial quick and suboptimal design into a better one, ultimately boosting productivity.

The main causes of technical debt can be summarized as follows:

Imprecise or evolving requirements during the project.
Pressure to deliver the project to the customer earlier than expected.
Business pressure to deliver new functionalities quickly, sometimes at the expense of project-related activities.
Lack of knowledge and understanding on the business side, leading to decisions with detrimental effects on the project.
Delivering the product to the client before it’s fully finalized.
Too rigid solutions that hinder easy adaptation to additional needs, such as lack of modularity or excessive interdependencies.
Excessive focus on quick profit instead of deferring revenues and reaping potential benefits later.
Lack of adherence to standards and good practices in the initial stages, making later adaptation difficult or even impossible.
Insufficient or delayed refactoring in the early stages, making subsequent refactoring more challenging.
Incompetence of project members and cutting corners.
Problems with the solution’s architecture and inflexible functionalities that don’t adapt well to changing business requirements.
Lack of testing or an insufficient number of tests, increasing the risk of production incidents and unexpected errors.
Lack of cooperation within the team, hindering the flow of knowledge from experienced members to less experienced ones and business stakeholders.
Insufficient code refactoring or delaying its execution.
Difficulties in writing valuable code due to a lack of knowledge on writing elegant and manageable code.
Pressure leading to shortcuts in development.
Use of outdated libraries/frameworks.
Insufficient testing practices.
Inadequate documentation.
Lack of collaboration.
Influence of business decisions in new product development.
Dependency on third-party services.

These factors contribute to the accumulation of technical debt in software projects especially for cloud infrastructure development.

Consequences

Why Unaddressed Technical Debt is a Hot Button Issue for Businesses

Technical debt can have several negative impacts on software projects. It’s important to recognize these symptoms and take steps to manage and reduce the debt. Here are some key consequences of technical debt:

Reduced flexibility: Technical debt can hinder the adoption of new technologies and scalability. According to the Accenture Federal Digital Decoupling Study, 81% of companies feel constrained from moving to new technologies due to technical debt.
Disruptions to core operations: Technical debt can cause disruptions to core business operations, missions, and operational programs in 81% of organizations, as reported in the same study.
Development time inefficiency: Dealing with tech debt issues can consume significant development time. Developers spend an average of 13.5 hours per week addressing tech debt problems, which could be better utilized for productive tasks.
Challenges with testing: As technical debt accumulates, it becomes more difficult to keep track of and fix issues. Testing becomes more complex, especially when relying on manual testing as the primary approach to handle technical debt.
Hindered progress and improvement: A large amount of technical debt can impede the progress and enhancement of applications. Accenture’s study found that 82% of respondents believe that technical debt greatly limits their ability to augment or enhance legacy systems.
Budget losses: McKinsey estimates that 10% to 20% of a company’s technology budget is diverted to repaying technical debt, resulting in reduced resources for innovation and growth.
Decreased team productivity: Growing technical problems require additional effort from the team, leading to fatigue and decreased morale. In 76% of cases, paying down technical debt negatively affects team productivity, as per the Developer Coefficient report by Stripe.
Loss of competitiveness: Technical debt can hinder the development of new features and responsiveness to market needs. Fixing existing issues takes priority over creating something new, slowing down progress and making it difficult to compete with agile competitors.

If you observe any of these symptoms in your project, it is crucial to assess the amount of technical debt and implement debt management practices to address the issues effectively.

How to avoid and minimize Technical Debt?

By adopting infrastructure as code practices, it is possible to mitigate technical debt by minimizing human involvement, enforcing security best practices, incorporating stakeholder input into the design process, and ensuring reproducibility.

To avoid and minimize technical debt, the following techniques and practices can be implemented:

Dissemination of awareness: Promote awareness among programmers and clients about the impact of technical debt, emphasizing the importance of debt elimination.
Compliance with good code writing practices: Adhere to coding standards and best practices to maintain code quality and reduce the accumulation of debt.
Code review: Conduct regular code reviews to identify and address potential issues or areas of technical debt.
Thoughtful solutions from the start: Avoid incurring technical debt from the beginning by implementing well-thought-out and sustainable solutions.
Software architect involvement: Include a software architect in the team responsible for making technical decisions, particularly at the architecture level, to prevent the accumulation of debt.
Business awareness: Recognize the value of the company and align technical decisions with the business objectives, prioritizing debt reduction accordingly.
Refactoring: Utilize refactoring as an effective technique to improve code quality and address existing technical debt.
Regression tests: Implement robust regression tests to detect and remove errors or issues as they are introduced, preventing further debt accumulation.
Automatic code analysis and debt measurement: Utilize tools and technologies that provide automated code analysis and measurement of technical debt to identify and track areas that require attention.
Work ethic and company culture: Incorporate the reduction of technical debt as part of the work ethic and promote a culture that values code quality and debt management.
Strategic acceptance of small debt: Occasionally, accept a small amount of technical debt when necessary, but ensure it is managed and addressed promptly.
Focus on less critical areas: Restrict incurring technical debt to less critical topics or areas within the enterprise, minimizing the impact on essential processes.
Planned and predictable debt management: If incurring debt, do so in a planned and predictable manner, treating the introduced solutions as temporary and with a predetermined period for repayment.
Risk analysis and size assessment: Before incurring technical debt, evaluate its size, impact on the business, and analyze the associated risks.
Regular technology investments: Make regular investments in technologies, such as ongoing software updates, which can prevent the accumulation of significant technical debt and reduce the overall cost and effort associated with debt repayment.
Pair programming: Encourage pair programming, where two developers work collaboratively on the same code, to improve code quality and reduce the likelihood of introducing debt.
Continuous learning and education: Emphasize personal growth and education among team members to enhance their skills and knowledge, enabling them to maintain high-quality code.
Code readability: Maintain high code readability, ensuring that the code is easily understood by other team members, as it is an essential aspect of code quality.

By implementing these techniques and practices, you can effectively manage and reduce technical debt in your projects. Remember that being proactive in managing technical debt can lead to significant reductions in its overall impact.

7 Reduction Strategies to Manage Technical Debt

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Create a Shared Definition of Tech Debt in Your Company:

A cloud infrastructure team and business stakeholders hold a workshop to establish a common understanding of technical debt in the context of their cloud infrastructure projects. They discuss the implications of technical debt on business outcomes, such as increased operational costs and slower time to market. This shared definition helps align priorities and encourages collaboration to address technical debt effectively.

Strictly Define a Timeframe and Activities to Mitigate Tech Debt:

A cloud infrastructure team identifies technical debt in their infrastructure code and establishes a dedicated sprint every quarter to address debt-related tasks. They allocate specific hours during these sprints solely for addressing technical debt, such as improving security configurations, optimizing resource allocation, and implementing automated infrastructure testing. By adhering to this defined timeframe and activities, they consistently reduce technical debt in their cloud infrastructure.

Introduce Code Standards and Reviews:

A cloud infrastructure team adopts a set of coding standards and guidelines tailored for their cloud environment. They conduct regular code reviews, where team members audit each other’s infrastructure-as-code implementations for adherence to these standards. This practice helps identify areas of technical debt, such as insecure configurations or lack of documentation, and enables the team to address them promptly, improving the overall quality of their cloud infrastructure.

Embrace Agile Software Development Practices:

A cloud infrastructure team adopts agile practices, such as Scrum or Kanban, to manage their cloud infrastructure projects. They incorporate technical debt tasks as user stories or backlog items in each sprint, ensuring regular allocation of time and resources to address technical debt. By embracing an iterative and incremental approach, they consistently tackle technical debt, maintain code quality, and deliver reliable and scalable cloud infrastructure.

Refer to Automated Testing Activities:

A cloud infrastructure team implements automated testing practices for their infrastructure code. They utilize infrastructure-as-code testing frameworks and tools to automatically validate the correctness, security, and performance of their cloud infrastructure deployments. By running automated tests as part of their continuous integration and deployment pipeline, they detect and resolve issues early, reducing the likelihood of technical debt accumulation in the cloud infrastructure.

Start Refactoring Problematic Terraform Code:

A cloud infrastructure team identifies areas of technical debt in their existing infrastructure codebase, such as poorly organized templates or redundant resource configurations. They prioritize refactoring efforts to improve the code quality, modularity, and maintainability of their infrastructure code. By systematically refactoring problematic code, they gradually reduce technical debt and enhance the overall efficiency and resilience of their cloud infrastructure.

By applying these strategies in their cloud infrastructure projects, teams can effectively mitigate technical debt, improve the quality and reliability of their infrastructure code, and optimize their cloud environment for long-term success.

In conclusion, mitigating and avoiding technical debt is crucial for delivering projects in a faster and more automated way. One key aspect is reducing the time to deployment and establishing standardized practices for creating and managing infrastructure. This can be achieved by leveraging the expertise of the platform team, who can create templates that the rest of the team can utilize.

By utilizing these templates, teams can streamline the process of infrastructure creation and management, ensuring consistency and efficiency. The frustration of diagrams and designs being out of sync with the actual code can be alleviated by adopting a unified approach facilitated by the platform team’s templates.

To further enhance the project delivery process, the concept of an “Architect Elevator” can be embraced. This involves engaging architects at strategic points in the development process, ensuring continuous alignment between design and implementation. By incorporating architectural guidance throughout the project lifecycle, teams can avoid potential design-related technical debt and prevent costly rework.

Ultimately, the adoption of standardized practices, leveraging infrastructure templates, and engaging architects strategically can enable organizations to deliver projects more efficiently, reduce technical debt, and achieve faster and more automated deployments. By prioritizing these approaches, teams can lay a strong foundation for successful and sustainable software development.

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