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.
Lou Franco’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…
