How to manage tech debt
As an experienced technical developer turned software founder, you understand the importance of building a viable product and delivering a quality user experience. But as your software grows and evolves, it's all too easy for technical debt to accumulate and have a negative business impact.
If left unchecked, technical debt can cripple your ability to innovate and keep pace with your competitors.
That's why managing tech debt should be a critical part of your development process.
In this article, we'll explore what tech debt is, how it can impact your business, and most importantly, the ways you can get ahead of potential issues.
What is tech debt?
Technical debt, or code debt, occurs when the speed of delivery and release is prioritized over achieving the highest level of quality code. So, in choosing the easier solution at the time, you are accepting there is a cost of reworking and refactoring suboptimal code in the future.
But tech debt can happen at any stage of development. Two common types of tech debt are intentional and unintentional.
Intentional tech debt
Intentional tech debt happens when a deliberate decision is made to prioritize for the present rather than the future. In this case, you intentionally decide to leave improving the code to a later stage in the development or even at some point after the release.
For example, you may decide to opt for an MVP feature to see if customers even care about this new thing you build— knowing you will have to find a better solution at some point in the future if it takes off.
Unintentional tech debt
Unintentional tech debt, however, is accidental. It may occur due to poor design, not understanding how to design an architecture to meet the market requirements, or a simple mistake. Often, the error doesn’t show up until long after the project is completed.
Unintentional tech debt can also show up as insufficient or out-of-date documentation. For instance, instead of following best practices, the team may move too fast and take shortcuts in the documentation, making it hard for other programmers or those new to the team to evaluate or fix future problems.
Why is tech debt problematic?
Tech debt can be thought of as similar to financial debt.
Sometimes acquiring a small amount of tech debt intentionally may not be bad, especially if you plan to address it quickly or have a plan to deal with it. But problems do occur when there is too much tech debt or unintentional tech debt.
You want to reduce your tech debt because if too much accumulates, it puts the product and potentially your business at risk.
For instance, unmanaged tech debt can lead to the following:
Increased development costs due to delays or need to bring in more staff to try and solve the problems
Decreased developer productivity
Poor customer experience and higher churn
Increased risk of security problems, which can cause people to question using your products
Decreased usability of the software or product
Decreased sales due to problems with the software or product
Increased customer feedback and support tickets due to bugs
7 actionable strategies for managing tech debt
When managing tech debt, you can use strategies to prevent or repay it. Because as discussed earlier, there may be times that you intentionally acquire some tech debt.
1. Do regular code reviews
Scheduling regular code reviews provides the opportunity for a fresh look at the code. This approach can help the team spot bugs, typos, edge cases, or more. As a result, you can identify problems that could lead to unintentional tech debt before they become problematic.
Doing regular code reviews can also help you find problems before releasing or launching the product. You can address the problem before it is found by an end-user, which may help reduce the costs and time needed to fix it.
2. Set up automated testing
In addition to code reviews, you should also incorporate automated testing. Automated testing is a collection of individual tests, like automated scripts, to double-check the code and validate the system. These automated tests can provide another way to identify and avoid bugs.
Setting up regular automated testing can also help ensure you are creating code that is clean, organized, and apprehendable. So months or even years later, the code is still easy to understand.
For instance, you can run consistency regression unit tests. Consistency regression unit tests check to make sure that your code is still working the same way even after changes have been made to it. It's like making sure your bike still rides smoothly before you take it out for a spin. By catching mistakes early on, we can save time and money in the long run by avoiding bigger problems down the line.
3. Adopt auto-formatters, linters, and static analysis tools for code quality
Auto-formatters help you keep your code looking consistent by formatting it in a specific way. This makes it easier for you and other people to read and understand.
Linters are like spell-checkers for code. They check your code for errors and suggest ways to fix them. This helps you catch mistakes early on and avoid problems down the line.
Static analysis tools check your code for things like performance issues or security vulnerabilities, which can help make your code faster and more secure.
By using these tools, you can improve the quality of your code and make it easier for other people to work with, which is really important as you start to hire additional developers.
4. Prioritize the highest impact debt first
The best situation is to make sure your debt load is not getting too high in the first place. However, that’s not always possible.
Therefore, it’s important to set up a system of identifying and categorizing a priority level to each tech debt.
When categorizing, consider the needs of your customers, how urgent the issue is to fix, the impact it may have on other aspects of the business, and any costs of delaying fixing the issue.
For instance, some code that’s overengineered but functional may be a lower priority than a bug that is causing customers to churn.
5. Allocate dedicated resources for bug-fixing and improving software documentation
One approach to managing tech debt is to allocate regular dedicated time and resources for bug fixing, version updates, security vulnerabilities, and documentation updates. These are all things that are easy to procrastinate on, and can cause real headaches down the line.
For instance, the ideal solution is to have a dedicated person or an entire team that is focused on this.
However, this may not be practical if you are a solo founder. In these scenarios, it might be better to allocate an entire sprint to this each quarter or carve out a few hours a week to tackle this.
6. Slow down
The more tech debt you have, the more time and effort it takes to maintain your code in the long run.
Another way to avoid some tech debt is to slow down and take the time to plan and design features properly from the beginning. This might mean taking the time to understand the problem you're trying to solve, thinking through different solutions, and creating a detailed plan on your whiteboard.
While it can be tempting to rush through things and get your code out there as quickly as possible, this often leads to more tech debt in the long run. By slowing down and taking the time to do things right the first time, you can avoid the cost and hassle of maintaining poorly written code later on.
7. Incremental code refactoring
Code refactoring is the process of improving the code while still maintaining its existing functionality. Scheduling time for incremental code refactoring can help you avoid the much more disruptive task of having to rebuild your app from scratch down the line.
Actionable tips for minimizing tech debt moving forward
Identifying and addressing tech debt is an ongoing process.
Here are some additional tips you can incorporate to help you address and minimize tech debt moving forward.
Invest in more automated testing to help you identify bugs and issues faster.
Include dedicated time for QA and bug-fixing before you release any new feature or update. No matter how small the feature is!
Keep track of your technical debt. Then, make a plan to prioritize and review it regularly.
Enforce coding standards. Establish and consistently apply coding standards and best practices to minimize the introduction of new tech debt.
Refactor code on an iterative basis to avoid a lengthy full refactor of your entire codebase later on.
Conduct regular code reviews so issues don’t build up or get missed.
