Technical Debt

Here is an interesting article on Tech Debt from Martin Fowler’s website. It is a part of a series where the authors discuss how startups get into the bottleneck as growth changes the context for ways of working. I think their arguments hold up even for fast growing products in larger enterprises.

The article starts with defining tech debt which goes beyond just code quality issues, and includes coupling, unused or low value features, manual processes, tooling and more. Next, it delves into how to determine that you are approaching the point where it will start to impact growth. Lastly, it discusses strategies to manage tech debt.

Many engineering teams are shackled by a self-limiting belief that technical debt is of their own doing. This is further reinforced when they are expected to just figure it out and fix it. If only it was that simple! My biggest takeaway from the article: managing tech debt requires involvement from more than just the engineering teams; the leaders, product, and engineering must join hands for it to work.