Big myths surrounding technical debt

#todayilearned #api #techdebt

TL;DR notes from articles I read today.

Myth #1 is that tech debt is amorphous, when in actuality it is usually a collection of many discrete problems. This means you can quantify tech debt (frequency, impact, cost to fix) on a spreadsheet or tracker and then prioritize based on impact.
Myth #2 is that all tech debt has a single cause. In fact, there are three major sets of causes (or enablers):
- Intentional tech debt, where the team knowingly took shortcuts to meet deadlines.
- Unintentional, where poor code results from inexperience or incompetence or misunderstood requirements.
- From age, where incremental enhancements and bug fixes cause a bit rot.
Myth #3 is that you should never intentionally take on tech debt. But there are three situations where it may be justified: you are building a prototype or demo module to solicit feedback on a new feature or product, time to market is critical or you are building based on guesswork and anticipate client requirements will change sooner than later.
Myth #4 is it only hurts engineers. In fact, it affects developers, product managers, customer support teams and customers, technical operations, and any executive team you may set up.
Myth #5 is that only a full rewrite can repay the debt, whereas more often, a detailed plan of incremental fixes will solve it.

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