If your business has technical debt, then it’s imperative that you understand that it can have a huge negative impact on the future growth and even existence of your business. While it is true that technical debt is often inevitable in any sort of software developing and engineering company, it should not be ignored. It cannot rectify all by itself and therefore, it continues to accrue interest over time. This interest along with the principal must be repaid on time just like any financial debt. Otherwise, it will result in several issues which will in turn result in poor productivity of the code.
It Creates Problems
Apart from poor productivity due to poor performance and functionality, codes with technical debt lower the overall quality of the code as well. When a code created with lots of care and effort does not perform to the desired level, it affects the morale of the code development team. You will start to receive complaints and the code will come back without providing the proper value. You will have to spend money, time and effort in creating stories and in refactoring the code with the help of proper tools and techniques. It will result in low productivity and you will start to incur huge losses.
Good Enough Codes
Not all codes with technical debt require refactoring. There are some codes which have technical debt in them that are still good enough to retain for a short-term gain. Such codes are useful for the business as you get immediate gain from them. To determine such codes the amount of time and effort required is calculated and if it is found to be very little then such codes are left as is. Usually technical debt occurs due to the pressure from all quarters to maintain a strict deadline to release a code. Apart from that, change of focus and existence of critical bugs also can be the cause of technical debt.
Not To Be Ignored
It is unwise to ignore technical debt. This will have a huge negative impact on your business and will affect the capability of delivering good quality codes by your software development team. On the contrary, you should involve both the technical as well as the non-technical team for the job in order to minimize the risk. The stakeholders must also be involved as they are the ones who will decide the cost effectiveness of such rework on faulty codes.
Best Remedial Measure
Unfortunately, you cannot completely avoid technical debt. What you can do is to take preventive action which is the best remedial measure so that you are prepared for it and can take immediate and appropriate action when it arises. You can start by making use of the resources available to you. Click here to learn more.
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