How to Track Technical Debt in One Easy Step
Jul 23, 2017 · 2 min read

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:
- Search the entire code base and find occurrences of //TODO or //HACK
- Count all those instances
- Optionally, post that count to statsd (see setting up statsd)
Step 1: Copy the Tech Debt Script

Keep up with the code and changes via github:
Pros
- It’s a number you can use to get a barometer reading on how you think about your code base.
- You can measure, graph, track, report, and alert on it.
- If you can measure it then you can plan work to address it.
Cons
- 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.
- 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

