From Mess to Success: How to Effectively Manage Technical Debt

How to Keep Technical Debt Under Control: A Practical Guide

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Justin Trugman & Kevin Urrutia
March 27, 2023

Welcome to 98 new Bug Driven Developers this week! If you enjoy this post, forward it to your developer friends so they can join us.

Here’s what we got for you today:

  • Uncluttering the Mess: Managing Technical Debt in an Organized way

  • Additional resources to learn more about managing tech debt

  • Are we in a recession?

  • The Billion-Dollar SEO Industry

Let's start off this week by talking about Managing Technical Debt

We know technical debt is a fact of life in software development, but that doesn't mean it has to cripple your codebase. In this week's newsletter, we're discussing strategies for managing technical debt like a boss.

First, let's define what technical debt is. Technical debt is the accumulated cost of sub-optimal code design decisions over time. It's what happens when you take shortcuts to meet a deadline or cut corners to deliver features faster.

But technical debt isn't all bad. The key is to know how to manage it effectively. Here are some strategies for keeping your technical debt in check:

  1. Acknowledge the debt: The first step to managing technical debt is acknowledging that it exists. Once you've accepted that it's there, you can start developing a plan to deal with it.

  2. Prioritize the debt: Not all technical debt is created equal. Some debt can wait, while others requires immediate attention. Prioritizing the tech debt based on its impact on your codebase and users is crucial.

  3. Create a plan: Develop a clear plan for addressing your technical debt. This plan should include short-term and long-term goals, timelines, and the resources required to execute the plan.

  4. Track progress: Track your progress in paying down your technical debt. This will help you stay on track and measure the effectiveness of your plan. One easy way to do this is to create a card for each piece of tech debt on your plan in your favorite project management tool (like Jira, Trello, and GitHub Issues) that map to a higher level card or epic. This way you can track how much tech debt is resolved and how much is left to go.

  5. Communicate with stakeholders: Keep stakeholders informed about the technical debt and the plan to address it. This will help manage expectations and avoid surprises.

  6. Avoid taking on new debt: While this is much easier said then done. Try to avoid taking on new technical debt whenever possible. This means taking the time to design code that's scalable, maintainable, and extendable.

  7. Use automation to your advantage: Use automation tools to help you manage technical debt. Automated testing, code analysis, and continuous integration tools can help you identify and address technical debt more efficiently.

In conclusion, technical debt is a reality in software development, but it doesn't have to be a huge burden. By following these strategies, you can manage technical debt effectively, keeping your codebase healthy and your users happy.

📖 Learn more here

Here are some guides we like that can be helpful to dive deeper into managing technical debt:

🔗Links in Tech

Some additional reads we liked this week

😂 Meme of the Week

Thanks for tuning in to this week’s newsletter! If you have any questions, feel free to let us know on Twitter (Justin's Twitter) (Kevin's Twitter)

Thanks,

Justin + Kevin

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