What is Technical Debt?Examples of Technical DebtCauses of Technical DebtHow Technical Debt can Impact Business?Ways to Reduce Technical DebtAddressing Technical Debt with Typo
Technical debt is a common concept in software development, affecting everyone from software engineers to engineering managers and CTOs. Understanding how to reduce technical debt is crucial for these professionals, as unmanaged debt can slow down development, increase costs, and hinder innovation. In this article, we’ll explore what technical debt is, its causes, and—most importantly—provide actionable strategies for reducing technical debt in your organization.
‘Technical Debt' was coined by Ward Cunningham in 1992. Technical debt is the future cost of quick solutions. It arises when software engineering teams take shortcuts to develop projects, often for short-term gains, which leads to creating more work for themselves in the future. This typically happens when teams choose the quickest solution rather than the most effective one.
Technical debt can manifest in various forms beyond code, including architecture, documentation, testing, and processes. It could be because of insufficient information about users' needs, pressure to prioritize release over quality, or not paying enough attention to code quality.
However, this isn't always an issue. But, it can become one when a software product isn't optimized properly or has excessively dysfunctional code. When technical debt increases, it can cause a chain reaction that can also spill into other departments. It can also result in existing problems getting worse over time.
Below are a few technical debt examples:
Prioritizing business needs and the company's evolving conditions can force developers to ship quickly, making it a major challenge to balance technical debt work with feature development. It can result in preponing deadlines or reducing costs to achieve desired goals, especially under tight project schedules and urgent demands; often at the expense of future cost. Insufficient technological leadership and last-minute changes can also lead to misalignment in strategies and funding.
As new technologies are evolving rapidly, it makes it difficult for teams to switch or upgrade them quickly, especially when already dealing with the burden of bad code and layering them onto existing systems. In practice, emerging technologies can introduce new technical debt, and AI can amplify how technical debt accumulates by adding categories such as compatibility debt. Switching away from outdated technologies or obsolete or deprecated technologies also creates integration and maintenance issues that exacerbate technical debt.
Unclear project requirements are another cause of technical debt, as they lead to going back to the code and reworking it. Lack of code documentation, inadequate testing, or weak test coverage is another reason for technical debt, since these gaps can lead to bugs and security vulnerabilities.
When team members have skill gaps or lack the necessary knowledge to implement best practices, unintentional technical debt can occur. It can result in more errors and insufficient solutions, so training can strengthen technical debt management and help teams manage technical debt more consistently.
It can also be due to when the workload is distributed incorrectly or overburdened which doesn't allow teams to implement complex and effective solutions.
Frequent turnovers or a high attrition rate is another factor. As there might be no proper documentation or knowledge transfer when one leaves.
As mentioned above, time and resources are major causes of technical debt. When teams don't have either of them, they take shortcuts by choosing the quickest solution, which often creates existing debt and adds future debt. It can be due to budgetary constraints, insufficient processes and culture, deadlines, and outdated systems that make remediation harder over time.
Managing technical debt is a crucial step. If not taken care of, technical debt results include slower delivery, reduced development speed, and weaker business outcomes, making it harder for an organization to innovate, adapt, and deliver value to its customers. In fact, 81% of executives say technical debt constrains AI success.
Just like how financial debt can narrow down an organization's ability to invest in new projects, technical debt restricts them from pursuing new projects or bringing new features. Hence, resulting in missed revenue streams.
When the development team fixes immediate issues caused by technical debt; it avoids the root cause which can accumulate over time and result in design debt - a suboptimal system design.
When tech debt prevails in the long run, it can result in new features being delayed, create slower development cycles, and make fixing bugs take longer, which delays releases, frustrates customers, and can undermine future development stability. As a result, customers can become frustrated and seek alternatives.
The vicious cycle of technical debt begins with shortcuts and compromises that accumulate over time. Below are several effective ways to reduce technical debt:
The automated testing process minimizes the risk of errors in the future and identifies defects in code quickly. It creates a safety net for changes and refactoring, so teams can work in existing code with more confidence. Automated testing also helps prevent regressions when refactoring code, ensuring that improvements do not introduce new bugs. Further, it increases the efficiency of engineers when testing is built into the development cycle, giving them more time to solve problems that need human interference. It also helps uncover issues that are not easily detected through manual testing.
Automated testing also serves as a backbone for other practices that improve code quality such as code refactoring and helps teams avoid common mistakes during code reviews like skipping tests or rushing feedback.
Regular code review in routine helps with identifying technical debt early, allowing the team to handle it in the long run. It also encourages knowledge sharing among team members. As it helps in constant error checking and catching potential issues which enhance code quality.
Code reviews also give valuable input on code structure, scalability, and modularity, with reviewers using code analysis to spot issues. It allows engineers to look at the bugs or design flaws in the development issues, especially when they follow an effective code review checklist. There needs to be a document stating preferred coding practices and other important points.
Refactoring involves making changes to improve legacy code and address existing technical debt without altering its external behavior. It is an ongoing process that is performed regularly throughout the software development life cycle.
Refactoring supports technical debt reduction and broader debt reduction by improving clarity, readability, maintainability, and performance. Incremental refactoring—making small, continuous improvements—prevents the accumulation of technical debt and reduces risk.
But, as per engineering teams, it could be risky and time-consuming. Hence, it is advisable to get everyone on the same page. AI-powered tools can automate parts of refactoring work for tech teams. Acknowledge technical debt and understand why refactoring can be the right way.
Engineering metrics are a necessity. They help teams measure technical debt and quantify technical debt so they understand what can be done instead. A few of the suggestions are:
Track technical debt items alongside these metrics so teams can prioritize the most critical technical debt and other critical technical debt based on impact, using key DevOps performance metrics to uncover bottlenecks.
Identify the key metrics that are suitable for measuring technical debt in the software development process. Ensure that the teams have SMART goals that are based on organizational objectives. Accordingly, focus on the identified issues, prioritize technical debt like normal feature work in sprint planning, start with the items that have the clearest business impact, and create an actionable plan.
Not all technical debt is created equal. Prioritizing technical debt based on its business impact ensures that the most critical issues are addressed first. Evaluate which debts have the greatest effect on customer experience, system stability, or business goals, and tackle those as a priority.
Dedicate a fixed percentage of developer capacity—such as 10-20% of each sprint—to addressing technical debt. This ensures that debt reduction is a continuous effort and not sidelined by feature development.
Keep technical debt items and feature work in a unified backlog. This approach helps teams balance technical debt reduction with ongoing feature development, making it easier to prioritize and plan work holistically.
Leverage static analysis tools to automatically identify code smells and vulnerabilities. These tools provide actionable insights that help teams proactively address issues before they accumulate into significant technical debt.
Encourage developers to "leave the codebase cleaner than they found it." Following the Boy Scout Rule helps maintain cleaner code and gradually reduces technical debt over time.
Discuss technical debt regularly in team meetings and retrospectives. Open conversations about debt help teams stay aware of its impact and foster a culture of continuous improvement.
Reducing technical debt involves establishing a culture of continuous maintenance. Encourage teams to view maintenance as an ongoing responsibility, not a one-time task, to prevent debt from accumulating.
Agile Development Methodology, such as Scrum or Kanban, promotes continuous improvement and iterative development, aligning seamlessly with the principles of the Agile manifesto.
It breaks down the development process into smaller parts or sprints. As Agile methodology emphasizes regular retrospectives, it helps in reflecting on work, identifying areas for improvement, and discussing ways to address technical debt.
By combining agile practices with a proactive approach, teams can balance feature development with technical debt reduction during each sprint.
Last but not the least! Always listen to your engineers. They are the ones who are well aware of ongoing development. They are working closely with a database and developing the applications. Listen to what they have to say and take their suggestions and opinions. It helps in gaining a better understanding of the product and getting valuable insights.
Besides this, when they know they are valued at the workplace, they tend to take ownership to address technical debt.
To remediate technical debt, focus on resources, teams, and business goals. Each of them is an important factor and needs to be taken into consideration.
With Typo, enable your development team to code better, deploy faster, and align with the business goals by leveraging an advanced engineering analytics platform. With the valuable insights, gain real-time visibility into SDLC metrics and identify bottlenecks and improve developer productivity with AI intelligence. Not to forget, keep a tap on your teams' burnout level and blind spots they need to work on.
Learn More About Typo or explore a live demo account with no setup.
To remediate technical debt, focus on resources, teams, and business goals. Since each of them is important factors and needs to be taken into consideration.
Implement engineering metrics, gather SDLC insights & set continuous improvement goals in your dev teams.
Try Live Demo
We're on a mission to build engaged, productive tech teams. Try it out for free!
Follow us on:
