Taking a shortcut and putting off work to finish the job in hand in quick time may give you a short term benefit but in the long run can affect your business’ productivity and even cause premature death. When such a situation arises then you are said to have technical debt. This is just like any financial debt but the only difference is that you cannot ‘see’ technical debt. As for other financial debts, car loan or home loan, you can see how much debt you have against your name and thereby choose a strategic plan to pay it off in time. But as for tech debt it is a metaphor and can only be ‘felt’.
Might Prove Fatal
Ignorance is not blissful always and if you deny tech debt and think to pay it off later at your convenience then you are allowing it to accumulate and spiral out of the ceiling to strangulate your business and jeopardize the mere existence of it. If you do not have a strategic plan well ahead of time then it might prove fatal for your company. Given such situation even the best software development team will not be able to save your company from going into oblivion. When you have unmanageable tech debts in your company you will have to make costly changes which is same as repaying your financial debt with interest.
Keep It Manageable
Keeping your tech debt within manageable limit will prevent your company from coming to a standstill and you may even argue that little bit of tech debt is good for your company as it will bring fair competition among your teams. It is true as far as you keep it within manageable proportions and rectify it when you feel it to be reaching great heights. Therefore it is always advised not to ignore it for long and have a plan in place for its repayment according to a repayment schedule. You must know it when you see it and also admit that it exists. It is only then you can tell your team to work for it to keep it within manageable limits.
Compromise Of The Evolutionary State
When you ignore technical debt you are actually compromising with the evolutionary state and the development objectives of your company. You are also putting the architectural stage of the software in danger which will result in its functionality and performance. When you release codes without proper annotations it will make it difficult for the future developers to debug the code when necessary without rebuilding it altogether.
Make Things Costly
Ignoring tech debt will make things costly with accumulation of debt. You can click here to know how debt accumulation can affect the functionality and effectiveness of any code. You will have to implement costlier testing methods which will make escaping defects even more difficult and costly. Therefore, to avoid all these troubles you should always keep a check on your debt accumulation and have a control over it through effective repayment plan so that you can keep it within manageable proportions.
