How to Help Reduce Technical Debt in Your Projects

Technical debt is one of the biggest challenges faced across a wide range of projects.

Whether it’s accumulated intentionally or accidentally, the issues caused by technical debt can cost businesses a lot of time and money, as well as give developers a lot of difficult problems that need to be resolved. According to a study by McKinsey, between 10% and 20% of technology budgets were reported to be spent on resolving issues that could be related back to technical debt.

Research by Stepsize also found that engineers spend around 33% of their time dealing with technical debt instead of progressing with a project. That’s a third of their time at work that could be spent on something else.

Being aware of the causes of technical debt and the ways that it comes about is the first step in helping to reduce it. But following on from that, here are some of the best ways that you can reduce and remove unnecessary technical debt in your projects.

What is Technical Debt in a Project?

There are a variety of different definitions of technical debt, but in general it can be classed as the result of decisions that are made during a software development process in order to reach a goal, milestone or deliverable sooner. These decisions tend to hinder the process or the end product in the long run as priorities are changed and corners get cut.

Technical debt appears in plenty of software development projects, and is often considered an unavoidable element of the process, at least in part. It’s the nature of a project that certain decisions have to be made to get a deliverable over the line, which means that the code, the design or the knowledge shared amongst the whole team suffers in some way.

You’ll find plenty of different explanations for the different types of technical debt, but a popular framework is Martin Fowler’s Technical Debt Quadrant.. This divides technical debt into four different quadrants: deliberate, inadvertent, prudent and reckless.

Deliberate and reckless technical debt occurs when a team deliberately decides to rush or miss something out whilst developing software, prioritising a deadline over the quality of what they’re making.

Deliberate and prudent technical debt occurs when a team realises that they are going to have to cut corners in a project to achieve a goal, but only does this after weighing up the options and deciding that it’s the best thing to do.

Inadvertent and reckless technical debt occurs when a team makes a decision that leads to technical debt without realising that they’re doing it. This usually happens when a lack of experience is coupled with a lack of resources or time, causing teams to make poor decisions without properly realising what they’ll have to deal with in the future.

Inadvertent and prudent technical debt occurs when technical debt happens unintentionally through mistakes during a project. The team will only be aware of these mistakes later, and can usually rectify them.

Technical debt often refers to issues in the code of a software development project, but may also impact the design of a product. It can also apply to the way that knowledge is shared within a team, with technical debt being the consequence of poor communication.

It’s important to remember that some technical debt is inevitable. Therefore, the best way to handle this is to be fully aware of the kinds of technical debt you are taking on in a project and the best way to deal with these, as this will reduce their impact as much as possible.

How Does Technical Debt Impact a Business?

A project with technical debt isn’t necessarily a bad project. But it can have a negative impact, both on the team that did the work in the first place and on the product that has been developed.

Technical debt often means that code may not have been written to the highest possible standard, which can lead to a high number of bugs in the software, security issues and problems with usability. These issues are likely to require more work to fix in the future, costing a team time and resources that they were previously trying to conserve.

This can impact the business behind the project, as their product may get bad reviews or not perform as well as its competitors. A study analysing the correlation between technical debt and business performance found that there was a significant link between these two factors, with revenue growth of up to 20% more when a business was in a higher percentile for their technical debt score.

If a team ends up having to resolve the issues caused by technical debt, the overall project may also have a higher cost. This can end up harming a business's profits overall, or mean that other projects aren’t given the financial support that they need.

The process of having to resolve problems caused by technical debt can impact a business, as employees will end up spending a lot of their time resolving problems and having to identify errors. A report on the state of technical debt in the engineering industry found that 52% of engineers believed technical debt is one of the key things that can negatively impact a team’s morale.

Not only can this impact productivity and morale, but it may also limit chances for innovation because so much time is spent revisiting projects. When businesses actively managed and reduced their tech debt, they found that up to 50% of their employees' time was freed up to work towards other important business goals.

Speaking of productivity, resolving issues caused by technical debt can really impact the flow of a team or an individual engineer. If technical debt regularly leads to bug fixing and repetitive refinement, software developers are likely to be less motivated to work on new projects and enjoy their work less, slowing progress and affecting the atmosphere in the workplace.

From a design point of view, technical debt can impact a business because it can lead to a lack of foresight when thinking of new features. When a team is just focused on delivering a product with certain features, they may not consider how additional features could be added in the future, limiting development and creating a lot more work in the future. This can mean that a business offering stops being competitive, leading to customers leaving for competitor products.

Technical debt that is knowledge-based can obviously cause problems in a business by slowing down the development of a project and leading to miscommunication that causes errors and discrepancies. But this can also cause friction between teams which not only makes collaborative teamwork difficult, but may also lead to employees leaving a company to work somewhere else.

How to Reduce Technical Debt in a Project

As we’ve already discussed, some level of technical debt is inevitable in a project, and trying to eliminate it completely is a waste of time. Minimising technical debt is a more reasonable goal, which you can do by following the below pieces of advice.

Be Aware of the Risks

If you’re going to end up making necessary decisions that result in technical debt during a software development project, you need to be aware of the risks that this poses. Before going down a path that may result in technical debt, first ensure that you have properly considered what this might lead to and calculate the overall damage that this might cause.

In an ideal world, you’ll be able to conduct this kind of risk assessment for certain kinds of technical debt before a project begins, helping you identify outcomes that must be avoided at all costs. But inadvertent and reckless technical debt is the kind that you most want to avoid, which you can do by remaining aware of the potential risks and their outcomes.

Decide How Much Debt You Can Manage

86% of IT professionals say that it is worth taking on technical debt in order to increase product or service launches. We agree, as long as you have properly calculated the impact this may have and the time it will take to manage any issues that arise because of it.

There will be instances in a project where you have to decide to take on some technical debt. The best way to navigate this is to make a decision right at the start of the project about exactly how much technical debt you can manage.

Once you know how much technical debt you’re willing to take on, you should then set coding standards and establish processes that ensure that this limit isn’t exceeded. This can help to stop too much time being spent on having to fix critical problems caused by technical debt, and give the team a more accurate idea of how much of the project will be spent on reviews and debugging.

Keep Track of Technical Debt

There’s nothing worse than being surprised by the consequences of technical debt, so a key piece of advice in minimising it in a project is to record and keep track of it. This gives everyone in the team visibility about what kind of debt has been accumulated and means that it can be tackled as the project progresses, instead of right at the end.

A great place to track technical debt is in your code editor, as this is where a lot of your team will spend most of their time, ensuring that everyone sees what is going on. Various tools on the market can help with this, and once you’ve established the process it can really help to reduce debt.

Address Technical Debt Regularly

If you let all of a project’s technical debt accumulate and don’t address it until the final stages, the issues you’ll have to deal with will be much more complicated than if you’d addressed them when they first came up. Make acknowledging and resolving technical debt a regular part of your project process, implementing checks and fixes as frequently as every day.

66% of engineers believe that the speed in which projects are completed could be made up to 100% faster if there was an established process for tackling technical debt. An additional 15% also believe that productivity would increase by up to 200% if a process was introduced.

Prioritise resolving technical debt issues over other fixes, and you’ll finish the project with a much more manageable level of debt.

Refactor Your Code

Code refactoring is one of the most effective processes for reducing technical debt. This process involves improving and refining a program’s code without changing any of the external behaviour, improving code that may have been written in a hurry and massively reducing technical debt because of this.

In a review of the economic impact of ‘bad code’, it was found that an average of 13.5 hours was spent resolving problems caused by technical debt that can be attributed to poor coding quality. You can introduce a regular code refactoring session into your project process so that maintenance is continual and the quality of the code is kept reasonably high.

This can also create a stage of the project for team members to reflect on the work they have already done and regroup before moving on to the next stage.

Make Project Knowledge Accessible to Everyone

Finally, if you want to reduce code, design and knowledge technical debt, the best way to tackle this is to ensure that all the information about the project is available to everyone. Barriers to information or a lack of clear communication can lead to major issues in software development, so your best bet is to have some kind of open document or regular update session where everyone is brought up to speed on what has been done and what is still to come. A combination of both this open document and an in-person meeting is probably the best approach, providing real-time updates as well as providing information for team members to refer back to.

Summary

As we've touched upon multiple times, technical debt isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it’s just a part of the software development process. When you view it as a factor to be controlled and resolved, it’s a lot easier to minimise unnecessary technical debt and plan how you’re going to resolve issues in advance, making projects much more streamlined and efficient.

About Inspire People

We believe that technology has the power to change the world for the better and we love working with businesses whose technology or purpose has a positive impact. We help businesses that share our vision access the people, resources and strategic advice they need to achieve their digital transformation goals

Our service is designed to accelerate your digital growth. We created our offer in response to emerging challenges in an uncertain business landscape: a blend of Advisory, Talent and Project led services that will help you achieve your strategic aims and deliver more for your employees and customers. We’ll connect you to rare specialist talent, experts and insight to help you navigate your biggest challenges and remain competitive in a changed world.

Get in touch today to discover how working with us could help you innovate and grow.

Speak to our expert team on +44(0)20 7871 8550 or email  hello@inspirepeople.net