Re:Reframing Tech Debt
by wpietri on Sunday November 21, 2021 @05:34PM
(#29300454)
> I had this idea of maybe simply having a "tech debt team"
Please don't do this. If it's one team's job to clean up the messes other teams leave, you've created a terrible incentive for other teams around working clean.
I remember one place where each project had a fixed-in-advance schedule and engineers were rotated among projects based on whoever was available when the project officially started. Since people rarely worked in the same area of the code base from project to project, the incentive was to get something working and then GTFO. The code of course got steadily worse. So then the company would compensate with major rewrites of the most garbage-y sections.
Please don't do this. If it's one team's job to clean up the messes other teams leave, you've created a terrible incentive for other teams around working clean.
I remember one place where each project had a fixed-in-advance schedule and engineers were rotated among projects based on whoever was available when the project officially started. Since people rarely worked in the same area of the code base from project to project, the incentive was to get something working and then GTFO. The code of course got steadily worse. So then the company would compensate with major rewrites of the most garbage-y sections.