/1/ “The metaphor also explains why it may be sensible to do the quick and dirty approach.”
/2/ “you only make money on your loan by delivering”
http://www.martinfowler.com/bliki/TechnicalDebt.html
Also, on a different stream of thought, look at the comments about making the debt explicit:
]]>Thanks for your comment - an interesting observation as usual. Note that I’ve delayed replying because I wanted to mull this over a little before posting a response.
Yes, you’re right, I didn’t make this very clear. I have to admit this was because I didn’t think it was useful to take the metaphor as far as you suggest. That is to say, I wouldn’t have regarded it as useful to think of a solution as incurring a technical debt unless there was a need to “settle up” promptly – normally, on the phase of development for the next release.
However, now I’m not so sure. I think a more fundamental way of looking at your point is this: any incurred technical debt, regardless of its size or the form it takes, needs representation in the risk register for the business (and not just for the project); this is the starting point for determining the consequent action to be taken.
I think this topic is worth a follow-up post, but I’ll have to think about it some more first.
- Mark.
]]>you fail to make the main point of the “Technical Debt” metaphore clear.
This is that developers are wrong to assume that “time must be made factored into the development schedule … reworked with more enduring solutions”.
Consider a debt that many of us are familar with - a mortgage. When planning the next month’s finances very few of us factor in repaying the mortgage. What we do factor in is the cost of servicing the debt. Other debts are more expensive and we chose to pay them off immediately.
Applying the “Technical Debt” metaphore to software development makes it apparent that we have a range of options - if the cost is high (a credit card) we can pay the debt off rapidly, if it is lower (a tracker mortgage) then we can get better returns by investing our efforts elsewhere.
The choice between such options is a management issue - developers can help identify the debt and the costs of either servicing or repaying it. But it is a management decision which approach benefits the business most.
Alan
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