13/3/2024
18/11/2024
How to interpret the technical debt of your company?
The technological debtor technical debtis often cited as a reason for the additional costs and resources required to bring the system up to date on the eve of 2024.
It also often leads to delays in the creation of a feature and keeps engineers and computer scientists busy with tasks that have no added value and divert them from new projects. More globally, technological debt seems to undermine theefficiency of companies.
What istechnical debt? How can you evaluate the technical debt within your company? How to interpret it? Is it possible to pay off the technical debt, to prevent its arrival? We answer everything in this article!
What is a technical debt?
Technical debt " is a concept invented in 1992 by Ward Cunningham, an American computer scientist. Directly inspired by financial debt, this term evokes the saturations and obsolete systems that will eventually have to be corrected and that accumulate over time.
Indeed, while the bank loan gives rise to late interest, penalties and the extension of the repayment period in case of non-payment, the technological debt generates additional costs if it is not remedied in time.
Without regular patches, the costs (time and financial) of maintenance and upgrades increase. It then becomes more and more complicated to correct defects, bugs and poor quality code. This makes it more difficult to pay back the technical debt over time.
It is convenient to think that technical debt arrives over time, as a project develops. However, it can arise from the very beginning of the project, during the planning phase for example.
It is indeed possible at thebeginning of the project to opt for an already aging system, or to postpone an improvement or an important update until tomorrow.
How to evaluate the technical debt?
In order to best evaluate its technological debt, it is necessary to study the potential sources of obsolescence and malfunction of the systems used.
Recognize and anticipate the aging of the tools used
The first source of technical debt is in the libraries and components chosen to accelerate or improve the development of the project.
Even if we avoid choosing aging tools and opt for a state-of-the-art development system, we must keep in mind that this new technology is not sustainable.
It is therefore important toanticipate this aging process, in order to facilitate updates to components outside the application, without risking destabilizing the entire code.
Base a project on immature or prototype technologies
If the search for the most modern and innovative tools is not a bad thing in itself, be careful not to overdo it and to use tools that are too recent and unstable, and whose durability over time is not yet assured.
Using a technology that is not yet mature is indeed a bad choice for developing a project. It means taking the risk of having to go backwards, which is costly in terms of time and money, because the solution doesn't live up to its promises and you have to start from scratch.
Imperfect or inadequate source code
The most easily identifiable source of technical debt is undoubtedly the source code.
One of the most common reasons for technical debt is that the code is too complex. Producing code that is sophisticated, or even of too high quality, will make it more difficult for a new developer to evolve it, or make a fix.
A code done under pressure, without clear guidelines, and with a lack of collaboration within the team, is likely to be of poor quality.
.png)
How to interpret the technical debt?
As we have seen, technology debt is inevitable. Worse, if no decision is taken to reduce it in time, it accumulates and reaches a significant level, almost paralyzing the company's systems.
Indeed, the technological debt is often the result of having opted for a technological solution, then having based itself on it without making it evolve.
The solutions in question are most often software such as ERP, CRM, cash management or inventory management systems.
Aging technology solutions are no longer able to adapt to new business needs, and the company loses agility and efficiency. The company then invests a lot of resources in upgrad ing and diverts from more strategic tasks.
What is the right level of technological/technical debt depending on the sector?
First, it is important to keep in mind that technical debt, when it is not out of control, is not always bad and is part of every software development project.
Indeed, technical debt becomes a major problem when it is ignored or accumulated unintentionally due to poor decisions.
It is therefore necessary to find a balance and establish automatisms to manage the technical debt and keep it under control.
Favour the most suitable technological solutions for the project
Before choosing the technology solution on which to base your project, you must ensure that it will fit your business and meet the specific needs of the project.
This technology must be mature, proven and still be subject to regular updates .
The digital market is full of technologies of varying quality, so it is important to select the best ones for your project.
Similarly, it is important to limit the number of technologies used in the development of the project in order to gain in readability and efficiency.
Implement regular tests to verify the evolution of the systems
Regular testing ensures that the behavior of the code or technological systems on which the project is based meets expectations and that there are no bugs or malfunctions.
While it is true that these tests take up a lot of developers' time, who cannot work on new projects and new features, they save a considerable amount of time in understanding the appearance of new bugs.
In the event of an error, it is then easy to determine the source of the problem and make the necessary corrections.
Keep your team motivated and define immutable quality rules
To limit technical debt, it is important to define coding and development rules, criteria and best practices that your team will be required to respect when choosing technical solutions.
These rules must allow to write code in a structured way so that the whole team can understand and maintain it.
It can also be interesting to write technical documentation for internal use on a regular basis and keep it up to date.
The latter allows you to maintain a certain level of expertise within your teams and reflects an image of rigor in the efforts made to limit the technical debt.
For this type of content, you should focus on complex features and those for which the knowledge is held by only one person.
Conclusion
Thus, just like a bank loan, technological debt creates additional costs and penalties if it is not repaid on time. The source code written today will irrevocably become the main source of technical debt for tomorrow's project.
Ensuring its quality, compliance with standards and the right technology choices is undoubtedly the best way to keep control of the technical debt.
It is therefore crucial to analyze the sources of technical debt within the company and to remedy it as quickly as possible.
More fundamentally, it is important to put in place automated systems that allow the company to prevent and correct bugs and technical malfunctions over time.
