Andy Lester gave a very fun and enjoyable presentation on Managing Technical Debt. Technical debt is all of the TODO statements in your code-Things you know are broken, but never get around to fixing. Andy gave 5 points to getting out of debt and staying out.
- Identify debt
- Determine costs of each item
- Fix the most profitable.
- Stop getting new debt.
- Remain vigilant.
There was a lot of detail in the presentation about how to succeed at each stage. Perhaps the hardest is steps 4 and 5, since both of those often require the understanding of management. Management needs to know why it needs to spend money in better, not faster, solutions.
I really liked how he said for step three you need to work at each item one at a time, rather than tackle it all at once.
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