I presented on Managing Technical Debt at the AgileDC2018 conference held at the Kellog Conference Center at Gallaudet University in Washington DC. I'd previously presented variations of this talk at Agile2014 in Orlando, as well as the Global Scrum Gathering in Las Vegas and in Barcelona. Below is the abstract, along with the slides from the…
In my previous post, I talked about establishing a debt payment plan. On a Scrum team, there are several approaches a team can take to pay down the debt. Debt Limit Trigger – Whenever our debt limit is reached, the team focuses the next Sprint on technical debt reduction (better than nothing).Release Trigger - After every…
In the previous blog, we looked at how when we don’t actively manage our debt, it can lead to a vicious cycle we can’t get out of. We want to make prudent and deliberate decision on debt and have a plan to service the debt and make our payments. So to do that, we need a…
In my previous post, we looked at the difference between good technical debt and bad technical debt and highlighted the importance of keeping our debt low. Unfortunately, the typical scenario that most teams face is that they eventually reach a point where their output is lower then what it used to be. Instead of stopping and…
In my previous post, we defined technical debt and saw how not all technical debt is bad. Just like in the financial world, some type of debt is considered ok as long as it is paid back. Consider a house loan or a car loan for example. Those are generally considered acceptable types of debt in…
In my previous posts we looked at symptoms of bad code and reasons we write bad code. And bad code leads to technical debt. Ward Cunningham introduced the Technical Debt metaphor by stating: “Shipping first time code is like going into debt. A little debt speeds development so long as it is paid back promptly with…
In my previous post, I discussed symptoms of bad code. Here I’m going to look into some of the reasons we end up writing bad code: Deadlines - You’ll hear excuses like we have a deadline to meet so we don’t have time to test or to make the necessary design change.Broken Window Theory - Another…
Bad code tends to creep up on us over and over again. We’ve all been there. We kick off a project, things start a little slow, but then things quickly pick up and a lot of features are getting developed and delivered. We have an excited team and a happy customer. However, soon things start to…