The technical debt would happen sooner or later but the key to effectively eliminating it is to understand precisely where it is actually coming from before it grows out of proportion. Several software developers regard technical debt as a negative concept and it is considered to be the perpetually accumulating cruft specifically in your system that acts as a hindrance to incorporating new features.
With an increase in technical debt, the work would be increasingly taking longer until a point is reached where there is no scope for any progress forward. Progress seems to be completely arrested.
From this perspective technical debt is similar to a credit card. If the balance is not paid in full every month, you would be charged an interest. Suppose you make sure that the minimum payment is made and you go on charging more, it is quite likely that you would never get rid of debts. Eventually, you would be compelled to declare bankruptcy after maxing out numerous cards.
Even though we firmly believe that debt is necessarily bad, there are clearly certain exceptions- at times, it becomes mandatory to finance an acquisition or a project. While debt could be taken for assisting you in moving innovation along rapidly, most of you often do not even consider how that might be culminating in breaches and breakdowns and ultimately, putting a business at risk. According to https://www.securityroundtable.org, it is crucial on your part to recognize and understand technical debt and combat any risks and challenges related to it.
However, eliminating technical debt could prove to be pretty laborious and equally challenging. It literally compels developers to stall their initiatives. You may go through reviews and then choose the best debt programs to manage your debts effectively. Let us explore the chief reasons why managing technical debt as often as and at the earliest possible is the right step to take.
Bugs Require More Time to Be Fixed
According to experts, even simple bugs could be taking a lot more time for getting fixed if you require choosing from humungous volumes of messy code that have been written by a number of different developers. The same type of issues comes up while trying to come up with brand new features including the smaller ones. In this context, you must appreciate and understand that technical debt has the capacity to transform a straightforward process into an incredibly complicated one.
You Are Compelled to Re-Do & Not Rewrite
When there is excessive technical debt, it becomes a huge chore if you are required to rewrite a particular section of code. In fact, developers would be compelled to consider redoing a code right from scratch instead of tweaking and that would involve a lot of resources and time.
Defer Tough Coding
Often there is immense deadline pressure that implies it is far simpler to consider implementing a quick fix and deferring tough coding preferably to a much later date. This deferment takes place because of technical debt and it would be culminating in more technical debt.
Extends Production Time
Technical debt is supposed to be just like a typical credit card debt. You need to keep it really small so that you can manage it fine. But when you start missing those payments, everything would be getting out of control and it would be far more time-consuming for incorporating new features and fixing bugs.
Smelly Code Would Be Accumulating Really Fast
Here is a fantastic instance of smelly code: many functions having similar parameters. Huge chunks of code are supposed to be just another strong smell. Often you come across an application wherein a majority of the functionality would be occurring in one class and that is also smelly. Suppose you are actually scanning your code when you are able to catch multiple smells which is a clear indication that technical debt is completely out of control.
We know that technical debt certainly is inevitable so you need to try and avoid it to the extent possible by taking great care. In this context, you need to keep in mind that if you are not successful in managing growth carefully, even the tiniest applications could be accumulating debt. Here are some effective ways for reducing technical debt.
- Once you locate a bug, you could consider incorporating a test for detecting it.
- Include paying down technical debt as an integral part of your development strategy. Do not hope to reduce and manage technical debt without dedicating some time towards it.
- Consider using static analyzers whenever possible. These would be giving you a clue pretty often regarding the precise location of the smelly code.
At the beginning of a project, the above-discussed steps could seem pretty overwhelming but they are really worth the effort eventually. In this case, the alternative is supposed to be a code-base which could be slipping out of your grip very quickly. You may lose control over the situation.
Learning to Effectively Pay Down Your Technical Debt
You need to understand how to effectively pay down your technical debt. Firstly, it is vital to acknowledge the fact that there are absolutely no shortcuts in life. Simply by attempting to take shortcuts, you could be generating far more crucial data.
It is crucial to consider conducting some sort of assessment and remember to address core issues like cyber-hygiene, development, and patching. You often end up overlooking a lot of fundamental issues. You definitely require thinking much beyond traditional security tools like antivirus and firewalls and adopt a certainly more holistic approach. Just by building extra layers or upgrading solutions you cannot rest assured that your technical debt would be reduced or your cyber-security risk would be minimized.
Conclusion
Technical debt poses to be definitely a perpetual challenge and it is something IT leaders and businesses must carry on revisiting. As per a technical debt guru, you must tackle cyber-security efficiently in a holistic and comprehensive manner. It is mandatory on your part to consider rethinking certain things and identify ways of staying relevant and up-to-date with security. This certainly is a perennial process without any ending and it is bound to be a tedious journey.
Adding new layers to your solution or updating it otherwise does not always mean that you are reducing risks to your cyber-security or cutting down on your technical debt. In many cases, pushing new updates recklessly may actually increase your technical debt. When you are designing any new module or feature, you should be considering the effect it will have on the legacy code and whether the approach you take is worth it if it will create a number of requirements for patches in other parts of your code. Ultimately, you want a clean slate for your software; for it to be modern and forever evolving than to have to keep looking back and thinking about how you want to mitigate dependencies on technical debt.
