Paying down tech debt
Struggling to find your "tech debt balance?" Here's an effective formula that ensures you'll get tangible value in exchange for your effort.
It’s hard to know how to tackle tech debt, especially on a large project. Should you invest the time to reduce debt? Ignore it and push forward with new features? Resign yourself to living with an ugly, hard-to-use code base?
Connect to productivity and value
There’s actually a really good algorithm to answer these questions. It’s rooted in tying your tech debt remediation to delivering value, as Lou Franco points out:
The heuristic I use to pay tech debt these days is this: by reducing a specific tech debt, can I increase developer productivity and deliver business value right now?
If I can’t, then I don’t pay it down.
The results can’t be argued with. You get faster feedback loops, less cognitive load, and happier, more productive developers — which all leads to getting valuable features out the door faster.
’s recent guest post, on The Pragmatic Engineer, about paying down tech debt is excellent. I highly recommend the read, he gives some fantastic advic…Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
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