Technical debt is a metaphor describing the trade-off between short-term benefits and long-term stability in software development. Like financial debt, it accumulates interest: the longer you ignore it, the harder and more expensive it becomes to repay.
Imagine you are building a house. Instead of laying a solid foundation, you decide to save time and resources by using a temporary solution. The house is built quickly, but the risk of collapse increases daily. Technical debt in software works similarly: quick but suboptimal decisions can speed up product release but create instability and complicate further development in the long run.
“The problem of technical debt is especially relevant in the context of modern software development, where market speed often prevails over code quality. Agile methodologies, continuous integration, and delivery (CI/CD), as well as the growing complexity of software systems, create an environment where technical debt can accumulate unnoticed but swiftly”,
— Ksenia Filippova, product owner at SimpleOne SDLC
The primary goal for development teams is to balance between quickly creating functionality and maintaining a healthy codebase. Ignoring technical debt can lead to severe consequences, from critical system failures to the complete inability to further develop the product.
In this article, we will examine the sources of technical debt, analyze the consequences of ignoring it, and propose strategies for effective management.
Sources of Technical Debt
Technical debt gradually accumulates from various sources during the development and operation of software.
Incidents and Problems from ITSM Processes
IT Service Management (ITSM) processes often reveal issues that become sources of technical debt. For example:
- Recurring incidents indicating deep-rooted problems in the architecture or code;
- Temporary workarounds used for quick service restoration but not eliminating the root cause;
- Delays in fixing known issues due to a lack of resources or prioritization of new features.
Aspects of ITSM processes can create “hidden” technical debt, which may not be obvious to the development team but significantly affects product quality and user satisfaction.
Internal Development Processes
The development process itself can generate technical debt:
- Regression testing reveals new problems caused by recent changes, but fixing them is deferred to meet release deadlines;
- Self-discovered bugs by developers leading to temporary solutions or deferring non-urgent issues;
- Time pressure forcing teams to make suboptimal architectural decisions or neglect refactoring.
These sources are particularly insidious as they are often perceived as a “normal” part of the development process, leading to systematic neglect.
Other Sources
Technical debt can also arise from less obvious sources:
- Documentation gaps: missing or outdated technical documentation complicates product support and development;
- Known performance issues: optimization is delayed until a certain usage scale is reached;
- Outdated technologies and dependencies: using outdated libraries and frameworks due to migration complexities;
- Inconsistencies in development standards: different parts of the system written to different standards, complicating support.
Consequences of Accumulating Technical Debt
Ignoring technical debt may seem harmless in the short term, but its long-term consequences are often catastrophic. Let’s examine the real consequences of accumulating technical debt that can severely damage a business and its reputation.
Critical Failures and Financial Losses
Unexpected system crashes during peak loads or security vulnerabilities leading to data breaches can cost a company huge financial losses. This is especially true for Business Critical systems that are vital to core business processes. Such incidents not only result in direct financial losses but also cause long-term damage to the company’s reputation, leading to client loss and decreased market value. Ignoring technical debt increases the risk of such situations, jeopardizing the stability and competitiveness of the business.
Increased Problem Analysis and Resolution Time
As technical debt grows, the system’s complexity increases, leading to:
- Longer time needed to diagnose and fix errors;
- Requiring more specialists to solve even relatively simple tasks;
- Increased risks when making changes, as developers cannot predict all side effects in a tangled system.
All this not only slows down the development of new functionalities but also significantly increases the cost of product support.
Reduced Development Efficiency
Low development efficiency becomes an inevitable consequence of accumulated technical debt. New developers require more time to master the architectural base, and experienced team members are constantly switching between developing new features and resolving issues caused by technical debt. This leads to a decline in team motivation and a significant drop in productivity.
Decline in Product Quality and User Satisfaction
End users also suffer from accumulated technical debt through a decline in product quality. The frequency of failures increases, new features are introduced more slowly, and system performance deteriorates over time. All this reduces product satisfaction, leading to customer churn and loss of market share.
Effective Management of Technical Debt
Let’s discuss key aspects of effective technical debt management that will help development teams maintain the health of their projects.
The “20% Time on Technical Debt” Principle
This approach to managing technical debt has become the gold standard in software development. The essence is that the team allocates about one-fifth of its time to refactoring, optimization, and addressing technical debt. This approach allows for continuous improvement of code and architecture quality without sacrificing the development of new functionality. It’s important to understand that this is not a rigid rule but rather a guideline that can be adjusted based on project specifics and the current situation.
Task Prioritization
Prioritizing technical debt tasks is a critically important aspect of management. Not all technical debt tasks are equivalent, and the team must be able to identify the most critical areas. The prioritization process should include an analysis of the impact on business goals, risk assessment, and the complexity of resolution.
For effective prioritization, teams can use various methods:
- MoSCoW (Must have, Should have, Could have, Won’t have): helps prioritize tasks by their importance to the project;
- RICE (Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort): evaluates tasks by their potential reach, impact, confidence in estimates, and required effort;
- ICE (Impact, Confidence, Ease): a simplified version of RICE, focusing on impact, confidence, and ease of implementation;
- WSJF (Weighted Shortest Job First): considers both the business value of the task and the time required to complete it.
The choice of method depends on the project’s specifics and team preferences. For example, technical debt that directly affects system performance or data security usually has the highest priority. Using a prioritization matrix that considers both urgency and importance of tasks can greatly assist in this process.
Integrating Technical Debt Work into the Software Development Life Cycle
Instead of treating technical debt work as a separate activity, it should be integrated into regular development processes. This may mean adding refactoring tasks to sprints, conducting regular code reviews focusing on identifying potential technical debt, or integrating automated code analysis tools into the continuous integration process.
Integration of SDLC and ITSM Approaches
Integrating software development life cycle (SDLC) and IT service management (ITSM) approaches allows for a holistic view of the product’s state, combining development data with system operation information. For example, analyzing incidents and problems from ITSM can reveal hidden technical debt that is not obvious to the development team. Conversely, information from development processes can help the support team better understand the root causes of emerging problems.
For effective integration of SDLC and ITSM, the corresponding tools must meet the following criteria:
- Ability to centrally manage the backlog, including technical debt tasks;
- Functionality for visualizing and analyzing relationships between technical debt elements and business processes;
- Support for automated metric collection and report generation for assessing progress in technical debt work;
- Flexibility in configuring workflows that account for the specifics of both development and operation.
Practical Steps for Managing Technical Debt
1. Creating and Maintaining a Technical Debt Backlog
The first step is to systematize information about existing technical debt. Create a separate backlog for tasks related to technical debt. It’s important that it is accessible to the whole team and regularly updated. This backlog should include:
- Description of the problem or area for improvement;
- Evaluation of the impact on the product and business;
- Estimated complexity and time for resolution;
- Potential risks of ignoring it.
2. Regular Review and Updating of Priorities
Technical debt is a dynamic entity, and its priorities can change over time. Establish a regular process for reviewing the technical debt backlog:
- Conduct monthly or quarterly backlog reviews;
- Involve developers, architects, and business representatives in discussions;
- Evaluate changes in business priorities and their impact on technical debt;
- Adjust task priorities based on new information and changing circumstances.
3. Integrate Technical Debt Work into Sprints
It is important that technical debt work is perceived as an integral part of the development process and not as a separate or secondary activity. Integrating technical debt reduction tasks into the regular development process is key to sustainable progress:
- Allocate a fixed percentage of each sprint’s time to technical debt tasks (e.g., 15-20%);
- Include refactoring and optimization tasks in the “definition of done” for new features;
- Encourage developers to propose code and architecture improvements within their current tasks;
- Highlight technical debt tasks in a separate swimlane on the task board or use special badges to label them.
4. Monitoring and Measuring Progress
To effectively manage technical debt, you need to measure it and track progress. Visualization of progress helps maintain team motivation and justify the need for technical debt work to stakeholders. Implement the following practices:
- Define key metrics for assessing technical debt (e.g., build time, test coverage, code complexity);
- Use static code analysis tools to automatically identify problematic areas;
- Create a dashboard to visualize the current state of technical debt and progress in reducing it;
- Regularly report progress to the team and management.
5. Integration with Change Management Processes
Link technical debt management with change management processes in your organization. This approach ensures that technical debt is considered at all stages of the product lifecycle.
- When planning major changes or new features, evaluate their potential impact on existing technical debt;
- Consider opportunities to reduce technical debt when implementing new technologies or architectural solutions;
- Include technical debt analysis in the decision-making process for product development.
Conclusions
- Technical debt is an integral part of software development, and ignoring it can lead to severe consequences: critical failures, reduced development efficiency, and product quality deterioration.
- Technical debt arises from various sources, including ITSM processes and internal development processes.
- Effective management requires a systematic approach, including regular time allocation for technical debt work and close integration of development (SDLC) and IT service management (ITSM) processes.
- Practical steps for managing technical debt include creating a dedicated backlog, regularly reviewing priorities, and incorporating technical debt work into sprints.
- Investing in technical debt management is an investment in the product’s future, ensuring its flexibility and competitiveness. SimpleOne SDLC provides comprehensive tools for effective technical debt management, including visualization, prioritization, and integration of technical debt tasks into the overall development process.
