The software engineers of all over the world faces and recognizes technical debt and considers it as a problem that needs to be addressed at the earliest. But the problem lies in the control and management of technical debt as most of the software engineers lack the methods and does not have proper tools to help them out and formulate a strategic plan to track and pay down the debt with interest.
Technical debt is not a metaphor any more but has become a perpetual problem for the software engineers. No matter how well they care and recognize it most of them lack an empirical basis and also the data science based on which they can validate their work on paying down technical debt.
From Metaphor to Theory
The journey of technical debt from being a simple metaphor to become a theory and practice is remarkable where its existence has caused several small as well as big companies to pull down their shutters prematurely. Therefore, it is essentially required to manage technical debt in all software based systems. The concept of technical debt is gaining attraction and focus to be a long-term management policy of the accidental complexities that is created by short-term benefits and compromises during the development of the software. The software companies have formulated several tools to address this ever growing challenge to assess the metaphor of technical debt and have also developed validated theory and other practices for its effective and more result oriented management. The technical and economic tradeoffs are taken care of with technical and executive decisions made by the stakeholders.
Survey the Software Engineering Landscape
It is required to surveying the landscape of software engineering and its formulating process to scope the concept of technical debt. This landscape of software engineering includes architectural or intentional technical debt, technological gap or technical debt due to the changesmade in the context, smaller granularity technical debt that are mostly of low internal code quality.
It is also required to establish the boundaries of these landscapesconsidering the evolution factor and its maintenance. All the defects, not yet implemented new features, and the lack of process that lie outside the boundary will not be considered as technical debt. It is required to distinguish the system qualities that are visible to the users from those that are invisible internal qualities. Such internal qualities are visible only to the software developers who worked on the specific project. Mostly, a defect in a software system will have an immediateand current impact on the value of the system that may be positive, if it is designed correctly or negative if corners were cut during the designing and development process.
Understanding the Advanced Concepts
Technical debt is only felt in the future as an additional cost that needs to be repaid at the earliest. All the defects in software are often symptoms of technical debt and therefore it is necessary to understanding the advanced concepts of technical debt. Primarily it is a part of an overall investment strategy where intentional debt that is related to the architecture of the software can speed up time to market for the product and also allow the company to release the code to the user ahead of the time frame. This can result in the receipt of early feedback and take necessary measures to evolve it. The immediate benefit is greater returns as compared with a debtfree development process.
Items of Technical Debt
It is also required to understand and describe the items of technical debt that is ideally a single element that connects with a set of development artifacts. Any organization can incur technical debt due to constant pressure of the schedule, time frame and also from the stakeholders. In such cases the developers of the program disregard the scoping rules. They tend to make expedient implementation of the process that results in closecoupling of two modules. When one is upgraded the changes affect the other module as well. This ultimately hits the budget of the project and it is all due to the unplanned work.
Quality and Value Reduction
When there is technical debt in any system the quality and value of the system is bound to deteriorate. It also affects the cost of the system. Therefore, to avoid such huge loss it should be addressed as soon as it is detected. The good news is that there are lots of ways in which you can quantify technical debt and monitor to as well that will help in effective and purposeful management of it. For this other jobs may not be put on hold as technical debt can be reworked or refactored along with other change requests that may be in the backlog of project issues and development.
Research from Several Domains
It is possible that you will arrive at the crossroad while monitoring and reworking on technical debt. In such cases where you find a number of research paths are converge you should research from different domains as is done by the modern software engineers. This will also help you in quantifying technical debt and monitor its economic impact over time. Such maturation will include software engineering disciplines, software aging as well as its decay, qualitative methods of appreciation of the context, risk management, software metrics and quality, program analysis and much more. All this will help in effective and result driven management of technical dent and also to keep it down by repaying the interest on time.
The Working Definition
According to the core concepts of technical debt the tool support in the modern times primarily focuses on the structural quality of the code and eventually impacts in itsmaintainability, runtime behavior, changeability and most importantly in its functioning. The working definition will determine how effectively and quickly you will be able to enjoy a debt free code.
Therefore, it is essential that you address technical debt with care and diligence so that it remains functional, useful and pays you dividend in return and not contain high rate of interest in its repayment.
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