Technological debt is when an application’s code becomes outdated and difficult to maintain.
Its typical consequence is a significant slowdown in development, which neither sales, marketing nor the product manager is happy about. The impossibility of rapid changes often leads to the outflow of customers (this is also confirmed by our experience), which can – and usually has – a major impact on business results. In addition, development often becomes more expensive because of it. In some cases, the situation even leads to the departure of developers dissatisfied with the functionality of the application.
What does tech debt look like from a user’s perspective?
- crashing apps
- slow content loading
- unfinished functions
Security risk – the user probably won’t see it, but the moment sensitive data is leaked, the customer usually disappears with it from practice: We also encountered a situation where the client was unable to process customers quickly and efficiently due to an outdated user account management system. This of course leads to great frustration on the part of the user – and the search for alternatives, i.e. using a competitor’s product.
3 main reasons why you need to catch up on technology
Debt ability to deliver better services (satisfied user = better business results) saving on customer support or personnel costs ahead of the competition. Where technology debt arises
Outdated technology. One of the reasons can be purely historical, when code or technology becomes an outdated part of the project preventing faster development of new functionalities and implementation of changes.
MVP as soon as possible. Especially for start-ups that need an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) quickly, we often see rapid product development at the expense of code quality. After releasing the application and testing that there is interest in the market for the product, the start-up stops investing time and money to catch up on technological debt.
How to start eliminating debt
We have extensive experience with the transition from old technologies to new ones. Here are 5 important steps to guide you if you want to start solving the technology debt of your web or mobile application:
1 – Identify the problem
At the beginning of any project, it is necessary to start with an analysis of the current state, when you map the technological debt. As a rule, the following 3 factors can be to blame:
deliberate decision – an example can be the already mentioned start-up, which decided to develop rapidly at the expense of code quality
inadvertent decision – arises, for example, from outdated technology that does not allow designing new functionalities
software disorganization or entropy – degrades performance over time because the application cannot be effectively managed and worked with
Futures tip: We recommend Martin Fowler’s text, which describes a four-type classification of technical debt.
2 – Plan
Create a plan for how you will go about solving tech debt:
Set clear goals that you want to achieve.
Create a list of changes to track across the team.
Prepare time and cost estimates for all described changes.
Make sure everyone on the team (business, project stakeholders, designers, developers, QA) understands the situation your project is in and what caused the current state. By discussing things together, you’ll be able to plan the next steps that will help set expectations for everyone involved.
3 – Define priorities
An agile approach allows you to make rapid changes in a short time with the help of frequent iterations. Thanks to shorter cycles and faster delivery of changes, you are able to tackle priority tasks gradually. Don’t forget about team hygiene: Thanks to joint conversations between development and managers (in the agile approach, so-called standups), you ensure the flow of information between all stakeholders, which prevents further errors and possible misunderstandings. Of course, the meetings will also help you plan your next steps.
4 – Refactor* and add automated tests
Make sure you are clear about the technical specifications, goals, and expected deliverables for the planned refactoring. Understanding the scope and requirements for changes is key to successful refactoring.
Design a sustainable application architecture that allows you to easily manage, change, and, extend your code. You will then, for example, be able to more easily scale to the number of users or add additional functionalities without restrictions.
Conduct continuous code reviews that will help you detect errors far before they reach production.
Use automated tests. Thanks to them, development is more efficient and cheaper. Fixing errors up to production is the most expensive because the developer has to reorient himself in the code, which again leads to the risk of introducing other errors. Define code standards so that everyone knows how you work with it, and document all activities. You will especially appreciate it in the future when new colleagues/developers arrive.
Don’t forget that… even newly written applications will accumulate technical debt over time, which is a natural phenomenon of software development, such as updating libraries, removing duplicate code, cleaning code, or adding automated tests. So don’t forget to set aside some of your time for refactoring