Re:It Takes 6 Days to Change 1 Line of Code (2015)
by SubuSS on Wednesday December 07, 2016 @01:08PM
(#13124651)
All tech debt need not be paid back in full - thinking otherwise is indeed a fallacy like you point out.
The catch here though is the fact that rate of business value production is inversely proportional to amount of tech debt. Meaning a ton of yes's today will mean a grinding halt in a couple of years. I have worked on too many (very successful) teams now and watched many others that have gotten themselves into this situation.
After this point, you end in a place where tech debt repayment efforts can take years - but it also coincides with 4-5 year mark when original developers are tired and leave. End product - a giant legacy system operated by a ton of new folk who have no clue what's up. End result: This gets 'deprecated' and replaced by a brand new one.
Ideally I do think data is gold but code needs to be incrementally ripped out and replaced every 3-5 years or so. Else entropy is too crippling on the system.
The catch here though is the fact that rate of business value production is inversely proportional to amount of tech debt. Meaning a ton of yes's today will mean a grinding halt in a couple of years. I have worked on too many (very successful) teams now and watched many others that have gotten themselves into this situation.
After this point, you end in a place where tech debt repayment efforts can take years - but it also coincides with 4-5 year mark when original developers are tired and leave. End product - a giant legacy system operated by a ton of new folk who have no clue what's up. End result: This gets 'deprecated' and replaced by a brand new one.
Ideally I do think data is gold but code needs to be incrementally ripped out and replaced every 3-5 years or so. Else entropy is too crippling on the system.