technical debt

Development Tradeoff

Tradeoffs occur when a team prioritizes speed over the long term quality of the code. While taking on technical debt allows for a faster launch, it means that the system will be harder to update and maintain in the future. As the code base grows, the interest on this debt is paid in the form of slower development cycles and more frequent bugs.

A team must eventually dedicate time to fix these underlying issues to remain productive.

Maintenance Burden

Legacy systems require more hours to keep running than well designed software. High levels of technical debt increase the complexity of the environment and make it difficult for new engineers to understand the system. This burden can eventually consume the entire capacity of the development team.

Refactoring Need

Plans must be made to rewrite parts of the system and remove the temporary fixes. If an organization fails to address its technical debt, the cost of adding new features will eventually exceed the value they provide. Unchecked debt eventually stops the development of new features.