This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Principles of Technical Debt Management
As we progress through the book, we will identify a small number of key software engineering principles that express universal truths related to technical debt. They are rooted in our experience with technical debt in industry and government software projects, and they are accepted or at least acceptable by the software engineering community. The nine software engineering principles follow:
Here is our first principle.
PRINCIPLE 1: TECHNICAL DEBT REIFIES AN ABSTRACT CONCEPT
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Technical debt is a useful rhetorical concept for fostering dialogue between business and technical people in a software development organization. On one hand, technical people do not always appreciate the value of shorter time to market, quick delivery, and rapid tactical changes of direction; on the other hand, business people do not always realize the dramatic impact some earlier design decisions can make in a software project and the costs they can lead to downstream. By identifying concrete items of technical debt, considering their impact over time, evaluating the lifecycle costs associated with them, and introducing mechanisms for expressing technical debt and estimating its impact, an organization can help everyone better understand the pains of software evolution and make the economic consequences more real and tangible. Then both technical and business people can plan how to reduce technical debt just as they plan new features, fix defects, and construct architectural elements.
We’ll introduce more principles in the following chapters, and you will find them summarized in the final chapter of the book.