How to Track Technical Debt in One Easy Step

Every software project will eventually run into a conversation around technical debt.

Nearly every developer will go through and mark up their code for things that need to be addressed, remembered, figured out — later on. Typically these things are marked with //FIXME or //TODO or //HACK (or a myriad of other things). Here’s a simple script to do the following:

1. Search the entire code base and find occurrences of //TODO or //HACK
2. Count all those instances
3. Optionally, post that count to statsd (see setting up statsd)

Step 1: Copy the Tech Debt Script

Example techdebt

Keep up with the code and changes via github:

fblecha/techdebtor

Pros

1. It’s a number you can use to get a barometer reading on how you think about your code base.
2. You can measure, graph, track, report, and alert on it.
3. If you can measure it then you can plan work to address it.

Cons

1. Everything has the same weight. A //TODO that would take 2 minutes and a //TODO that would take 2 months are both counted as 1.
2. It doesn’t track a business or architectural decision that creates technical debt but isn’t //TODO documented by a developer.

Credits

• Header image by Jacob Walti via Unsplash