Technical debt and its consequences for the company. Article for founders

Technical debt is a huge problem for many IT companies. In our practice, we met both small start-ups and large enterprises, which for this reason were in a deadlock and could no longer develop, scale up the product. Moreover, the solution being developed could be quite worthy, employees – proactive, the company – having authority in the market. However, due to the accumulated technical debt, the team absolutely did not control software operation and could not be sure of the delivery quality.

What caused this situation on the project? Technical debt is primarily associated with best practices of software development, testing and delivery, which for one reason or another have not been implemented. At the start of the project, founders and technical leaders often neglect CI/CD, automated testing, Unit testing, building a scalable architecture, product extensibility, the most important engineering metrics, generation of competent management processes, and pay all attention to the rapid development of the product and its entry into the market. After some time, the company should move to the stage of maturity, hone the processes and follow the built development strategy. However, this does not happen, since speed is important for the team and on a regular basis it faces difficulties and bugs. The problems that arise are solved symptomatically, while the cause remains unresolved (for example, delays in deliveries are solved by hiring additional specialists or overtime work, but not by the step-by-step implementation of CI/CD).

At the beginning of any project the lack of development and testing best practices is not so dramatic and distressing, but over time, as the number of components and interdependencies between them increases, control and stabilization of software operation require more and more effort and time. Accordingly, the development of the company in the commercial sense stagnates.

We prepared this article specifically for founders of IT companies, including those ones who do not have a deep technical background. Here, we will explain why the issue of technical debt is so important, and help determine whether your project has problems related to it. If such difficulties exist, you can take advantage of our plan to pay off technical debt, as well as get valuable advice on changing the culture of the team.

To simplify the task of identifying technical debt problems, we systematized the experience of working with various companies and prepared a checklist that will help you realistically assess the current situation on the project. Answer only nine questions to understand what technical debt exists on your project and requires focused attention and study.

Technical debt has global implications for the company. Especially if the founders ignore existing problems, do not invest in working on them, and do not bring up the current situation in the team for discussion. Most often, the following difficulties emerge on the project over time:

As practice shows, even if at the initial stages the team manages to contain the influence of negative factors, over time, as the critical mass of technical debt accumulates, there is a sharp decrease in motivation and performance.

So, you have realized that there is a technical debt problem on your project. So, what now? Definitely, it is necessary to tune in to a long step-by-step work, during which the team will have to overcome many difficulties and changes.

The first step to solving any problem is to be aware of it. If you have doubts or you constantly hear about problems from the team, then as soon as possible become versed in the topic of technical debt and current development methodologies. Understanding the basic concepts and interrelationships, you will be able to discuss emerging difficulties with the engineers, monitor the progress of tasks, and progress in changes. Even if you decide to hire third-party consultants to solve the problem, we recommend that you still understand the essence of the issue in order to clearly show the team that you are interested in solving the problem of technical debt, understand all the nuances, and take the issue under personal control.

The second step is achieving realism and honesty among team members regarding the technical debt. Both you and your team should recognize that everyone made their contribution to the current situation, but now there is no point in looking for the main culprit. You need to jointly analyze the situation on the project, understand the position of the project, and focus on solving the problem step-by-step.

The third step is assessing the problems of the project and developing a work plan. Use our checklist to determine what technical debt exists in the company.

Once the weaknesses of the project are understood and a plan of working with them is developed, you need to think about changing the culture in the team. Accumulated technical debt is a signal that some processes (both technological and managerial or communication) have been built incorrectly. Make sure that your team always has the opportunity and desire to discuss difficulties, offer more effective solutions, and express their opinion. This will help to make headway in technical debt remediation.

It is also necessary to change the organizational approach to the project. Put on the issue of remediating technical debt in the plan of each iteration. This activity should become mandatory. The whole team from engineers to founders should understand that certain amount of time per week is allocated specifically for technical debt remediation. It should not be possible to cancel or pause this task.

Another important component of technical debt remediation is the availability of a leader who has expertise in this area of work and will be able to direct and manage the team. We will tell you how to choose such a specialist and make sure of their professional suitability in the next section. You can also hire a third-party consultant.

Finally, one of the most important components of successful work on technical debt is belief in success. Although the nature of the problems is serious, it does not mean that such problems can be solved by only highly-qualified employees. A large number of routine issues can be regularly solved by mid-level specialists (Middle and even Junior+). Moreover, the latter has no fear of failure, and often you can rely on them if there is a powerful strategy and a good leader. The main thing is that specialists have a clear plan of action, as well as a great desire and motivation to master new approaches.

The help of an experienced leader is needed to systematically work with technical debt. However, their presence on the project does not always result in resolving the issue. This situation can be encountered under the following circumstances:

Thus, having an experienced technical leader does not guarantee that there are no problems with your project. Use our checklist to check this nuance.

It is difficult to overestimate the role of the technical leader in solving the problem of technical debt. The final costs and success of the work carried out depend on how they set the course and whether they can convince the team.

We offer to fill out a short checklist that will help determine whether your technical leader is able to overcome the problem of technical debt. Each item has its value calculated in points. Calculate the final score and see the result at the bottom of the page:

Launching processes aimed at technical debt remediation is often distressing for the whole company. This is the eternal fitness of things because the introduction of important practices requires serious transformations in the team: from changing the culture to transforming daily approaches to work. First of all, this is expressed in the clash of interests of stakeholders. Technical debt remediation requires significant labor costs for engineers, which leads to a temporary decrease in team performance and can slow down the process of creating important functionality for commercial deliveries. This can have a negative impact on sales and disturb stakeholders.

However, it is very important to promote the following truth in the company: the longer you delay the situation and accumulate debt, the greater the problems and financial losses for the whole company you will face in the future.

When the change strategy is approved by the managers, the following difficulty arises – perhaps, you will have to deal with the team’s resistance. Being used to working without stress and overcoming difficulties, having lost faith in changes, specialists can boycott new responsibilities for technical debt remediation. Unfortunately, sometimes there is hard logic and an unconscious subversive activity behind this. Usually, this manifests itself as sabotage or a sit-down strike, when engineers perform tasks for a long time, referring to the lack of time to complete your instructions regarding technical debt remediation. Especially if employees know that the founder does not understand the technical nuances.

Therefore, when faced with resistance, it is very important to develop tactics for interacting with the team, create a set of rules, and fix metrics related to the level of technical debt remediation. Constant demonstration of the results achieved will help to convince and motivate employees.

Of course, you can see that some employees are particularly resistant to important innovations or set other colleagues against them in the process of changing values. In this case, it is necessary to make a choice in favor of the future of the company and decide on dismissing the specialist.

In addition to improving technical nuances, accelerating the development process and reaching a new stage of development, technical debt remediation has three important consequences for the company:

Despite the fact that it is impossible to solve the problem of technical debt without the active actions of engineers, you can influence the situation and timely launch the work on which the future of the project depends. Whatever stage you are at now, we recommend following these tips:

Constantly develop your knowledge, study modern development methodologies and try to understand their essence. This will help you talk the same language with the team and objectively assess the progress. Based on our experience, we can say that all the founders we advised had to delve deeply into the value aspects of technical debt. And we are sure that it is possible regardless of your proficiency or technical education.

Get the opinions of technical experts more often. Establish a culture in the company which presupposes that everyone’s opinion will be accepted and handled. An atmosphere of trust will help to get complete information about existing problems and build a strategy for their solution.

Be realistic, no matter how hard it is. Try to honestly answer the question whether your team has learned helplessness, whether engineers have a too casual attitude to their work. Constantly monitor the situation and make the necessary decisions to improve it.

Deal with technical debt even in moments of trial and crisis. Unfortunately, over time this problem will not stop existing, but will only have a greater impact on your processes and team’s performance. 15-20% of developers’ time should be allocated to work with technical debt. This activity should be a mandatory part of sprints.

Remember that the following TOP 4 best practices should always be used on the project:

Want to get expert support in solving technical debt problems? We specialize in consulting in this area. We will be happy to help with a comprehensive analysis of the project, the introduction of best practices, as well as changing the values and culture of the team. Our managers follow Agile methodology, in which the independence and active participation of each team member is especially appreciated. Therefore, we guarantee that after the end of cooperation with our company, your specialists will be able to effectively independently advance in solving the tasks.

In this case, the entire business logic of the application was placed in complex stored procedures and it resulted in the emergence of technical debt. This greatly complicated debugging and increased the cost of product support. Accordingly, it led to product instability in production. Bug fixing inevitably provoked the emergence of new problems. At the same time, the company did not try to eliminate the cause of the situation but continued an endless struggle with bugs, which did not lead to the expected result. To get out of such a difficult situation, the company was forced to invest in a system solution using the Data Driven Testing approach. And this solution made it possible to get rid of the problem forever.

In the process of developing a complex knowledge-intensive product, the team faced serious difficulties that impeded further growth. At a certain stage, when the number of the company’s customers began to actively increase, the team found that the product was quite unstable. However, the engineers did not have the opportunity to correct the situation, since the project lacked automation, CI/CD, and Unit testing. It took years to completely eliminate the accumulated technical debt. And only systematic, regular, step-by-step work on the implementation of best practices is allowed to turn the tide.

The project for the development of a large-scale enterprise product reached a critical point in the accumulation of technical debt. The lack of automated testing, as well as continuous integration and delivery, hampered software scaling-up. Any attempts to make changes led to bugs in production. The entire team constantly experienced stress when it came to development and delivery. This situation did not allow the company to attract larger customers and increase sales. In addition, serious conflicts were generated in the team, as well as the engineers acquired learned helplessness. Solving the problem required a radical revision of processes, changes in the culture, and harder work on the accumulated technical debt.

According to our deep conviction, serious enterprise projects 3+ months old have technical debt. If such characteristics correspond to your situation, then you definitely need to allocate a sufficiently significant share of backlog for tasks related to this problem. If this is not done, the team will come to a state of learned helplessness. Also, over time you will not be able to develop the product and work with a large number of customers.

To make sure that there are no problems with technical debt, fill out our checklist. Each “Yes” answer in this list clearly indicates specific shortcomings that need to be worked on.

There is undoubtedly technical debt on the project if the following conditions are met:

If you want to get a closer look at the nuances and problems of the situation, fill out the checklist How to Know Your Project is in Danger.