Legacy systems, incompatible software, and obsolete technology hinder the productivity of most organizations. In the face of tech debt, processes become bloated, resulting in more significant bottlenecks. To meet business deadlines, developers skip specific development tasks such as writing clean code, creating concise documentation, or building clean data sources to meet deadlines. It is important to recognize, analyze, monitor, and measure technical debt to manage it. In many organizations, technical debt is difficult to manage due to a lack of tools and methods. Technical debt and the quality of software code have been investigated in several studies. A code smell analysis, coupling and cohesion analysis, and dependency analysis were used to identify technical debt.
According to industry observations, design trade-offs result in the most significant technical debt, which code quality measurements cannot detect. Assessing technical debt in industry and research is difficult due to the lack of practical tools. Essentially, technical debt is a short-term compromise that temporarily speeds up work but ultimately leads to greater complexity and cost. It is now understood that technical debt may be incurred unintentionally and unexpectedly rather than based on idealized decision-making processes and rework strategies. According to industry observations, design trade-offs cause the most significant technical debt, which code quality measurements cannot detect. Neither industry nor research has practical tools to assess technical debt. It is, therefore, mainly observed during maintenance and evolution. Rather than just a metaphor, technical debt is now recognized as a software development product.
A trade-off will always be between design and or development decisions and business objectives. Regarding IT leadership, one might need to remember that a codebase’s technical debt service may be several degrees away from the day-to-day operation. Technical debt needs to be resolved based on the business context of a software system. In some cases, taking on technical debt may be necessary for a product to succeed since time-to-market is a crucial factor. Software system models should include product managers’ and decision-makers perspectives, capturing their perspectives on the decision-making process. Conflicts between business goals and deadlines often lead to technical debt. Deploying perfect code before launching a company is probably not worth it in the long run.
Technical debt is caused by the following: business pressure, lack of tests, agile misconception, lack of processes engineering practices, lack of knowledge, lack of planning, lack of collaboration and or communication, parallel development, delayed refactoring. How to detect technical debt: low test coverage, code quality metrics, defect density, code smell, code churn, declining velocity, ageing software without refactoring.
If left unchecked, technical debt can spiral out of control within an organization. This type of debt is complex and will need to be addressed later. Consequently, asking questions and understanding its scope in depth is essential. Tech debt can be minimized by understanding the problem, finding its location in the product, estimating ongoing maintenance costs, collaborating with the company on other investment decisions, and including the payoff in a software product roadmap. Real challenges arise when workarounds are incorporated into company culture, as they become just another part of how things are done.
It can be complicated to determine which items of technical debt should be resolved based on the planned evolution of a software system. As a result, prioritizing technical debt items can be challenging. There are no immediate benefits to resolving technical debt in non-modified code parts. Technical debt analysis and resolution techniques and tools are mainly determined by software engineers and architects, often without considering market analysis or future developments. Therefore, methods and tools should be developed in collaboration with developers and decision-makers.
