How To Reduce Technical Debt – A Comprehensive Guide

Arpita Goala , Content Marketing Manager

September 26th, 2024

Technical debt or tech debt is often an unintended and unavoidable consequence of software development. With the speed at which technologies and products evolve, technical debt is something that every quality assurance (QA) team must deal with. 

While historically, tech debt was often blamed on bad code, today, we know and understand that it’s far more than that. In this article, we’ll discuss what exactly technical debt is, what causes it, and how to prevent it from increasing. 

What is Technical Debt? 

Technical debt refers to the implied cost and resources needed to rework shortcuts or easy solutions development teams are sometimes forced to take to meet tight deadlines. 

Since the focus is on “build now, fix later,” teams may not always take the time to understand and resolve issues at their root. Over time, these simple, shortsighted fixes no longer work and accumulate into “debt,” some of which must be paid back to ensure high-quality software. 

Coined by Ward Cunningham, one of the 17 co-authors of the Agile Manifesto, the metaphor equates quick-and-dirty coding with financial debt: you gain an immediate advantage but incur a future obligation to pay it back with interest.

However, equating tech debt to bad coding alone is outdated and often fails to consider environmental and situational factors that may have forced teams to make these tradeoffs. 

Blaming tech debt on coding also furthers a dangerous precedent that tech debt is avoidable with good coding. Even with the best coding standards, teams still have to revisit and refine things within their software to ensure an excellent user experience. 

What Causes Tech Debt: 

Now that we’ve discussed what technical debt is, it’s important to understand what causes it. Causes for tech debt include: 

• Time Pressure: Deadlines push teams to prioritize speed over quality.
• Lack of Knowledge: Inexperienced developers may unknowingly introduce debt.
• Changing Requirements: Evolving project scopes can make existing code obsolete.
• Poor Planning: Inadequate architecture and design decisions lead to unsustainable code.
• Insufficient Testing: Skipping tests to save time increases the risk of defects.

Types of Tech Debt

The reasons for technical debt growth can vary by organization and team, but in general, tech debt can be categorized into the following types. 

Deliberate: 

Created intentionally, deliberate tech debt involves teams making conscious decisions to compromise speed or quality to release faster. 

This type of debt is often considered acceptable in the short term, provided there is a plan to address it later. However, without a plan to address it promptly, it can add to development complexity and maintenance costs. 

Accidental:

This type of debt is often the result of developers not being aware of better solutions or making mistakes. It is an unintentional consequence of oversight, lack of experience, or inadequate understanding of best practices.

Accidental debt can be more challenging to identify because it’s not documented or acknowledged during development. It can lead to hidden issues that surface later as bugs or performance problems. 

Bit Rot:

Bit rot, also known as software decay, refers to the gradual degradation of software over time. Small changes, patches, and updates can accumulate inconsistencies and redundancies as the codebase evolves.

Bit rot can make the software fragile, inadvertently causing changes in one area to break functionality in another. This increases the risk of bugs and makes troubleshooting more difficult. 

Architectural: 

Architectural debt stems from foundational issues in the system’s design that hinder scalability, performance, or flexibility. It often arises from initial design choices that don’t anticipate future requirements. 

Environmental:

Environmental debt involves outdated or inadequate development environments, tools, or processes that impede efficient workflow. It can slow development cycles and make it challenging to implement best practices.

The Problem with Tech Debt

While technical debt sounds scary, it’s rarely a problem on its own. The challenge occurs when it’s ignored for too long, causing problems to accumulate and resulting in significant issues seeping into the user experience. 

Allowing technical debt to accumulate unchecked can have far-reaching consequences that extend beyond the codebase, including: 

Impact on Developer Experience (DevEx)

High levels of technical debt can significantly degrade the developer experience. As the codebase becomes more complex and difficult to comprehend, developers may spend more time deciphering existing code than creating new features. This reduced productivity can lead to frustration and lower morale, increasing the risk of burnout. Additionally, new team members may have difficulty navigating a convoluted codebase, making the onboarding process longer and more challenging.

Poor Product Quality

Quick fixes and workarounds implemented to meet tight deadlines may lack thorough testing, increasing the likelihood of bugs and defects. As the codebase becomes more tangled, it becomes inflexible, making it challenging to implement new features or adapt to changing requirements. Additionally, tech debt can result in performance issues, such as slow response times and inefficient resource usage, which can negatively impact the user experience.

Financial and Strategic Implications

From a financial perspective, technical debt can lead to higher operational costs. More time and resources are required to maintain and update a codebase burdened by debt, diverting attention from innovation and new development. Strategically, the inability to adapt quickly to market changes due to a debt-ridden codebase can result in missed opportunities. Moreover, accumulated technical debt can expose systems to security vulnerabilities, increasing the risk of breaches and compliance issues.

What Can You Do About Technical Debt?

So, while tech debt is unavoidable, there are steps you can take to reduce, manage, and mitigate it. Managing technical debt requires a strategic approach that balances immediate development needs with long-term project health. The following strategies can help:

Acknowledge Debt, Then Prioritize

The first step to resolving any problem is to acknowledge you have a problem in the first place. Managing tech debt is no different. Once you’ve acknowledged the debt, you can invest time and resources into identifying what issues occur and where within your codebase. 

Regular code reviews are essential for spotting areas where debt has accumulated. Teams should document these issues and maintain a backlog of technical debt items. Evaluate each item in your backlog for effort and impact. 

To ensure effective issue resolution, focus on high-priority issues that significantly impact your user experience or revenue.  By focusing on critical issues, you avoid redundancies and wasted resources.

Integrate Debt Reduction into the Development Process

Incorporating debt reduction efforts into the regular development workflow helps prevent debt from accumulating further. Include debt reduction in your scrum or agile sprints and encourage better coding habits by having developers continuously refactor code as they work. 

Finally, implement test-driven development by writing tests before code to ensure functionality and facilitate future changes.

Ensure Coding Hygiene

Develop and adhere to coding standards and best practices to avoid accidental debt from oversights and mistakes. You’ll also want to build comprehensive documentation that defines guidelines for code comments, design documents, and user manuals.

Holding regular meetings and workshops can also help ensure that everyone on your team understands how to write and maintain code in a standardized manner. 

Invest in CI/CD pipelines and Automation

CI/CD pipelines ensure that issues are identified and addressed promptly. When paired with automation, this approach can significantly reduce technical debt by streamlining development processes and catching issues early.

Be Realistic

Shifting goalposts and unrealistic deadlines are the biggest drivers of tech debt. Asking your team to deliver faster without due diligence sets them up for failure. Instead, involve them in setting deadlines to ensure feasibility. You can also allocate time for testing, code reviews, and refactoring in project schedules.

If it’s executive pressure driving tight timelines, as a leader, it would be your responsibility to communicate the long-term benefits of maintaining code quality over quick fixes. 

Technical Debt is Manageable

Technical debt is an inherent aspect of software development, but it does not have to be an overwhelming problem. Addressing it is not a one-time effort but an ongoing process that, when embraced, enhances productivity, improves product quality, and delivers greater value to users.

If your internal team is at capacity and unable to address your technical debt, consider partnering with knowledgeable software testing partners like Testlio. By offloading tedious tech debt tasks, your team can focus on development and innovation, allowing you to meet tight deadlines without sacrificing speed or quality while managing your debt.

Contact a member of our team today to learn how we can help drive testing efficiencies, enable product growth, and empower your team to do more.