Not Another Technical Debt Article

https://jimmyhmiller.github.io/not-another-technical-debt-article

by mooreds • 2 years ago

11 9 2 years ago

jimmyhmiller.github.io

I fail to understand what point exactly this article is trying to make.

It starts off telling me other articles about tech debt are wrong, because they urge you to allocate time to fix your tech debt. Instead, it argues for... fixing your tech debt??!

Maybe I'm dense, someone please tell me what I've missed. I can't make heads or tails of it.

aaronbrethorst• 2 years ago

I had the same reaction. Maybe the author should've included a koan to clear up their point.

mewpmewp23• 2 years ago

It seems to say that you should do it from your own time or sneak it in, in between because otherwise it would never get fixed.

In my experience though, usually the tech debt that matters is not that easy to fix, it often requires careful planning, coordination between different teams and takes a significant amount of time - more than a week definitely, as otherwise it wouldn't be that big of an issue.

It frequently also involves some level of risk of things going wrong.

Fixing or paying off tech debt will usually take significant time and you would be unable to work on actual features. So what will you say when you are unable to work on those features to higher ups if they haven't agreed to prioritise this?

I also don't understand the claim that always assigning portion of the points to sprints doesn't work out. It works out for us, exactly the way described to not work as well. We identify the tech debt, we estimate it, and we prioritise it. Then each sprint certain percentage will go to those tickets.

01acheru2• 2 years ago

My brain read the title as "Yet another technical debt article", I read it anyway and it really sounded like yet another of the same stuff, then I read the title back and decided to write this comment.

I don't see why this should be "not another" except it is shorter than those ten pages long blabbing medium posts, but the content is always the same.

kkfx2• 2 years ago

Just a marginal note: why not calling technical debt for what it is, let's say ignorance? If we avoid the politically correct form solutions and amplitude of the issues would be quickly much clear...

Older discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39015343

mewpmewp23• 2 years ago

How is "ignorance" the correct word here?

The older discussion link doesn't seem to have any comments to me.

kkfx2• 2 years ago

Let's say I have a technical debt in finance, it means I'm an ignorant in that field, so I know if I need such knowledge what to do...

Not Another Technical Debt Article

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