Technical debt accounts for 40% of development time.

When building software, developers often have to make trade-offs between speed and quality. While it’s tempting to take shortcuts to meet deadlines or push out features faster, these shortcuts often accumulate into technical debt—a term used to describe the extra work incurred when you choose an easy solution now rather than a more optimal solution that requires more time and effort.

40% of development time is spent paying down technical debt, which can impact the long-term success of your project. If left unmanaged, technical debt can pile up, making it harder to add new features, fix bugs, and maintain the application over time.

In this blog, we’ll take a closer look at what technical debt is, why it happens, the consequences of ignoring it, and most importantly, how to manage and reduce it effectively to ensure the long-term success of your software development projects.

What is Technical Debt and Why Does It Matter?

Technical debt is the concept of taking shortcuts in software development that increase future maintenance costs. These shortcuts can include things like writing quick, unoptimized code, ignoring code reviews, skipping tests, or using outdated libraries or frameworks.

Just like financial debt, technical debt accumulates interest. The longer you ignore it, the more it costs to pay off. For example, if you use a hacky solution to solve a problem quickly, you might end up revisiting the same issue months later, when it becomes more complicated to fix.

Why Technical Debt Matters:

1. Increased Development Time: Over time, as technical debt builds up, developers spend more time fixing broken parts of the application, maintaining old code, and working around inefficiencies, rather than focusing on new features or optimizations.
   
2. Lower Code Quality: As shortcuts are taken, the overall quality of the codebase decreases, making it more difficult to maintain and extend. This results in a messy, fragile codebase where bugs are more likely to occur.
   
3. Impact on Innovation: Technical debt slows down innovation. When teams are bogged down by the complexities of maintaining old code, they are less able to focus on adding new features, scaling the system, or improving user experiences.
   
4. Increased Risk of Failure: A codebase with high technical debt is prone to failures. As debt accumulates, the system becomes harder to change, and the risk of breaking something else while fixing an issue increases.

The Causes of Technical Debt 

Technical debt doesn’t just happen overnight; it builds up over time due to various factors. Here are some of the primary causes:

1. Short-Term Focus on Deadlines

In the race to meet tight deadlines, teams often take shortcuts in order to ship features faster. While these quick solutions may seem acceptable in the short term, they eventually lead to increased complexity and inefficiency in the long run.

Why this happens:

• Rushed timelines force teams to prioritize speed over quality.
• Developers may feel pressured to skip important tasks like writing tests or optimizing code.
• Stakeholders may push for feature releases at the cost of quality.

2. Lack of Refactoring

Refactoring is the process of revising and improving existing code without changing its functionality. Neglecting to refactor when code becomes messy or outdated is a major cause of technical debt.

Why this happens:

• Refactoring is time-consuming, and teams often prioritize new features over improving existing code.
• Developers may fear introducing new bugs while refactoring
• Lack of process or guidelines on when and how to refactor the code.

3. Poor Code Reviews

Skipping or rushing code reviews can lead to the introduction of poor-quality code that doesn’t adhere to best practices. Without proper peer review, technical debt accumulates rapidly as bugs and inefficiencies go unnoticed.

Why this happens:

• Tight deadlines or pressure to ship quickly may lead to skipping code review
• Lack of sufficient training on best coding practices can lead to poor code being committed.

4. Inadequate Testing

Skipping tests or writing inadequate tests may save time upfront, but it significantly increases the risk of introducing bugs and makes the code harder to maintain. As the application grows, the lack of proper testing results in a fragile system that is difficult to modify or extend.

Why this happens:

• Developers may see testing as an overhead or unnecessary step when deadlines are tight.
• Inadequate testing coverage can lead to undetected bugs and technical debt.
  
  

How to Manage and Reduce Technical Debt 

While technical debt is inevitable, the key is to manage it effectively to prevent it from taking over the development process. Here are some best practices to help manage and reduce technical debt:

1. Set Priorities and Create a Debt Repayment Plan

Just like with financial debt, technical debt needs to be tracked and repaid. Start by identifying areas where technical debt is accumulating, prioritize them, and create a plan to pay it down incrementally.

Best Practice:

• Use tools like SonarQube or Code Climate to identify parts of the codebase with high technical debt.
• Create a “technical debt backlog” in your project management tool to track debt and pay it off over time.

2. Implement a Code Review Process

A solid code review process ensures that code quality is maintained and that poor practices aren’t carried over to the project. Regularly reviewing and improving the codebase prevents the accumulation of technical debt.

Best Practice:

• Ensure that all code is reviewed before merging to detect errors and inefficiencies early.
• Encourage developers to refactor code as part of the review process, even if it means delaying feature completion.

3. Invest in Automated Testing

Automated tests can save a significant amount of time and reduce the risk of introducing new bugs while addressing technical debt. By writing automated tests for critical functionality, you can ensure that new changes don’t introduce regressions.

Best Practice:

• Use unit tests, integration tests, and end-to-end tests to cover critical paths in your application.
• Integrate testing into your CI/CD pipeline to run automated tests on every change to catch issues early.

4. Establish a Refactoring Culture

Make refactoring a regular part of your development process. Encourage developers to revisit and improve old code regularly to reduce technical debt and ensure that the code remains clean and maintainable.

Best Practice:

• Schedule regular refactoring sprints where the focus is on improving existing code rather than adding new features.
• Invest in pair programming or mob programming to facilitate knowledge sharing and collective ownership of code.

5. Make Debt Visible and Transparent

Technical debt should not be a hidden issue; make it visible to everyone involved in the project. By tracking and making debt transparent, you create a culture where everyone is responsible for reducing debt and improving the quality of the software.

Best Practice:

• Include technical debt in your project retrospectives and discuss ways to reduce it in future iterations.
• Visualize debt through tools like JIRA or Trello, and create regular reports to keep the team focused on managing debt.

Managing Technical Debt in Action 

Let’s look at a real-world example of how managing technical debt can help improve the long-term success of a project.

Example: A SaaS Platform’s Success A SaaS company’s development team faced a huge backlog of technical debt, primarily due to rushed development and missing refactoring cycles. The team implemented a strategy of prioritizing technical debt repayment and committed to refactoring parts of their codebase every two weeks. They also invested in automated testing and established a clear code review process. Over the course of several months, the team was able to reduce their technical debt significantly, which led to faster feature delivery, fewer bugs, and improved developer morale.

Reducing Technical Debt for Long-Term Success 

Technical debt is a natural part of software development, but it should not be allowed to accumulate unchecked. By making technical debt visible, prioritizing it, and following best practices like refactoring, automated testing, and code reviews, you can ensure that your project remains scalable, maintainable, and high-performing.

Remember, paying down technical debt is not a one-time task—it’s an ongoing process. By adopting a mindset of continuous improvement, your team will be able to avoid the pitfalls of unchecked debt and deliver high-quality software faster.

For more on improving code quality, check out our blog on code quality practices and how they prevent technical debt.

Ready to tackle your technical debt and improve the long-term sustainability of your software? Reach out to our team of experts to explore how we can help you implement best practices for managing technical debt and improving your development processes. It’s completely free, and we’re passionate about helping you build scalable, maintainable applications! Contact us here