What Is Technical Debt and How to Calculate It

Victor Osetskyi
EXISTEK
Published in
3 min readAug 11, 2018

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In an ideal world, every project is finished on time, and within the estimated budget, even better the budget has allowed to develop additional features and test everything one more time before the release. In the real world, the development process can encounter several difficulties, and technical debt is among the most common issues the project may face. It is essential to understand what is technical debt, how to evaluate them and especially how to tackle them.

Existek is a custom software development company helping our customers to solve their business challenges with best in its class software. Our team specializes in mobile development, web development, desktop development, business automation & intelligence development. Contact us to get an instant and free expert consultation about your project.

List of The Contents

  • What is technical debt
  • What causes technical debt
  • Types of technical debt
  • How to estimate it
  • How to eliminate technical debt
  • Final thoughts

WHAT IS TECHNICAL DEBT?

Technical debt is the additional work needed to complete software development. But this notion does not refer solely to the projects that are in development. This issue often follows the projects that are in production for some time. This may be anything, like some module written on the legacy technology, that holds the project back from including a new functionality or influence overall software stability. In this particular case, technical debt can be calculated as the time or money needed for the refactoring of this module’s code or porting it to the new technology. But usually, it is never that simple and software system includes a number of the drawbacks that can be included in the technical debt of the project.

Not addressing these debts as soon as possible can lead to more debts in the future resulting in poor software performance, difficulty or even impossibility to bring change to the software, an increased risk of breaking the software after each update. Managing technical debt at an early stage of the development process is crucial.

The use of the term debt is a reference borrowed from the finance world, like financial debts, technical debts, if they are not resolved very quickly, can generate interest. In other words, technical debt can give rise to new technical debts and can cost a lot to the software owner and development team.

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Read the full article about What Is Technical Debt and How to Calculate It here.

What is your favorite approach to technical debt management and why? Leave your thoughts and questions in the comments section below. Need a hand with refactoring old code, porting your legacy application to the new trendy technology, or anything related to the effective elimination of the technical debt in your project? We can help. Existek is an offshore software development company with extensive experience in consulting and project rescue. We can quickly assemble the dedicated development team for your project which will gradually analyze your solution, test it, come up with the solution, and bring it to perfection to make it ready for the introduction of new features and improvements. Contact us via the form at the website or start the discussion in the chat to get a free consultation on your case!

Existek is a custom software development company helping our customers to solve their business challenges with best in its class software. All-out technology expertise, including the provision of Flutter application development services, .NET development, Java development, web development, etc. Contact us to get an instant and free expert consultation about your project.

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Victor Osetskyi
EXISTEK

Full-cycle software development company. Latest company and industry news.