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We sound like idiots when we talk about technical debt

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Re: We sound like idiots when we talk about technical debt

#161

Post by gilbetron »

wokwokwok wrote: post #20

Controversial idea: Technical debt is something that 'business users' don't need to or want to care about. If you're having conversations about technical debt, you've messed up, and you will continue to have unsatisfactory outcomes until you stop doing so. You can't tell people; here is a dial, you can pick 'fast and you're screwed later' or 'slow and careful now'. You're setting yourself up for failure; they cannot…

This is the "just don't have technical debt" argument. Which entirely misses the point.

Re: We sound like idiots when we talk about technical debt

#162

Post by marginalia_nu »

selfhoster11 wrote: post #157
marginalia_nu wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get that a lot of people in IT are very facts-focused, but if you want to actually convince people that they need to act in some fashion, you need to add some emotional weight to your arguments (pulling numbers out of your ass is one way of doing that). Admit it or not, the reason you want the technical debt addressed is primarily emotional. You are frustrated with how difficult it is to work, you fear for the futu…

Fear of project failure is the signal that the company (= your employment prospects) will be damaged. Frustration with how difficult the work is, is a signal that the current path is unsustainable, and that burnout will set in, thereby damaging your ability to work (= your employment prospects). It's perfectly rational to be concerned about these things. We are not machines - or rather, we are machines that have ment…

There is no purely logical reason to ever actually do anything. It all starts with what you want and what you don't want. You may of course derive logically sound paths to get what you want or avoid what you don't want, but that's something else.

If you explain these logical steps to someone else, what you're doing is showing them that they too will likely be affected by what you're suffering, that is, showing them they have a reason to fear too.

Re: We sound like idiots when we talk about technical debt

#163

Post by gilbetron »

I get the using "debt" is an attempt to make it understandable to financial-oriented people, but I think it is a double-edged sword. You have to pay off financial debt, you don't have to pay off technical debt. I think using "technical friction" is a better approach. You are increasing the cost of future projects. "Cutting corners on that will increase the cost of all future efforts by 10%". That is more impactful and conveys the situation better. Likewise, "well, we cut corners here last year to get the demo made, so now this project takes 25% more time."

Even if we SWAG the percentages (which, guess what, financial-oriented people do all the time!), it lets Product Owners and Managers make better decisions.

Re: We sound like idiots when we talk about technical debt

#164

Post by selfhoster11 »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #162
selfhoster11 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fear of project failure is the signal that the company (= your employment prospects) will be damaged. Frustration with how difficult the work is, is a signal that the current path is unsustainable, and that burnout will set in, thereby damaging your ability to work (= your employment prospects). It's perfectly rational to be concerned about these things. We are not machines - or rather, we are machines that have ment…

There is no purely logical reason to ever actually do anything. It all starts with what you want and what you don't want. You may of course derive logically sound paths to get what you want or avoid what you don't want, but that's something else. If you explain these logical steps to someone else, what you're doing is showing them that they too will likely be affected by what you're suffering, that is, showing them t…

We are getting into the weeds here. Unless you are trying to tell me that there is no logical reason to trying to meet the bottom few tiers of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, in which case, while you may be right in a very strict sense ("nothing and nobody matters"), it's an extremely nit-picking position.

Re: We sound like idiots when we talk about technical debt

#165

Post by Notanothertoo »

Pamar wrote: post #149
lucasyvas wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally on point, but if I may offer a twist: Say you run a large plumbing company, and you discover your plumbers took shortcuts on a particular job that resulted in an abundance of leaks for a given project. The plumbing company cannot ask the plumbers for their pay back. They will have to eat the cost and fix the plumbing. So, it's the business's problem either way. They can additionally choose to fire those plumb…

"They made the mistake of hiring people that were not capable of surfacing risks." Exactly the problem we always deal with: Business tends to distrust Tech because we always seem unable to stay on top of things we build ourselves

There are two types of tech debt in my experience, things get out of date because they weren't maintained and it's harder to do now years later than absorbing some of that work a little at a time throughout the years. And the other kind is because of poorly written code which is often caused by poor business practices and changing requirements.

Re: We sound like idiots when we talk about technical debt

#166

Post by Notanothertoo »

Pamar wrote: post #134
alanwreath wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I must not understand technical debt...all of the scenarios you're mentioning seem like they could easily map to a technical debt scenario - a developer takes a certain strategy that is no longer valid (even technical debt that isn't recognized early on as being something that will have to be changed more than likely soon, is still technical debt in my mind -- your ability to recognize technical debt early on just me…

See my other answer below: trying to convince the payers that there are extra costs due to "technical debt" accumulated somehow during the lifetime of a sw project would sound "unconvincing" because from the point of view of the business that would be part of the job of the same people that are now asking more money/time/resources to fix it.

This reads like it's in a vacume and assumes the business requirements were comunicated, they were clear, and and static. None of which is reality. Additionally things get updadated and need con rant maintenance. Gone are the days of writing code and letting it run untouched for years.

Tech debt usually occurs when the people implementing it aren't aligned with the with the stakeholders.

Re: We sound like idiots when we talk about technical debt

#167

Post by vineyardmike »

louthy wrote: post #89
wokwokwok wrote: post #20

Controversial idea: Technical debt is something that 'business users' don't need to or want to care about. If you're having conversations about technical debt, you've messed up, and you will continue to have unsatisfactory outcomes until you stop doing so. You can't tell people; here is a dial, you can pick 'fast and you're screwed later' or 'slow and careful now'. You're setting yourself up for failure; they cannot…

One thing missing from your statement is that plenty of technical-debt comes from things that were done properly the first time , but since then assumptions have changed, or the business is different, or the customer's expectations have evolved, or a competitor has upped their game, etc. This makes the so called perfect solution then, imperfect now - i.e. technical debt. There are always trade-offs, and a good partne…

> technical-debt comes from things that were done properly the first time

So its not tech debt, its a complex system that takes longer to do things in future. "Bad tech debt" is like credit card debt, short term decisions made at expense of the future to impulsively satisfy immediate needs. "Requirements change over time but it was done right at the time" is like a mortgage and you need to move to a new town. Its entirely reasonable to have a slightly cumbersome payoff process because it was well chosen decisions. Still harder to pay off, and may incur more debt, but as long as its reasonable.

Re: We sound like idiots when we talk about technical debt

#168

Post by vineyardmike »

selfhoster11 wrote: post #153
willcipriano wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bob says it would take 2 Tell Bob I wish him the best of luck in this endeavor, he's clearly a better programmer than I am.

Bob can remain lucky for longer than you can keep your credibility intact (aka "markets can stay irrational for longer than you can remain solvent"). Ultimately, that stance gambles on Bob's luck running out and his lack of skill being exposed in time for you to profit from it.

Or realistically, bob looking good racking up tech debt and quitting before anyone needs to pay it off

Re: We sound like idiots when we talk about technical debt

#169

Post by samhw »

EugeneOZ wrote: post #118
samhw wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, certainly the tech debt code should be thrown away. I think this is hard to discuss without a concrete example in mind, though. Or rather without both having the same concrete example in mind . I get the sense that everyone here is imagining their own - very different - concrete example of tech debt, and talking entirely at cross purposes as a result.

If the foundation, base of the project is quickly created just for MVP - it should be rewritten. If just some of the small parts were created without care - then throwing them away is not a problem.

I really need to emphasise, 'tech debt' does not imply 'without care'. Just to link to the last comment where I emphasised this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30286955

This is why I say it's fruitless to discuss this without making clear what concrete examples we're imagining when we say 'tech debt'. I'm almost certain that you and I are not thinking of remotely the same thing. 'Tech debt' is very different from plain old shitty code.

Re: We sound like idiots when we talk about technical debt

#170

Post by phendrenad2 »

We sound like idiots because we treat businesspeople like idiots. We parrot a definition of tech debt we got from a blog post. The whole analogy to debt is a hand-wavy joke of a definition anyway. It's not debt, it's a liability that's depreciating the assets of the company intellectual property.

The only reason it looks like debt is because it compounds, which is ironically something people don't really focus on when discussing it with management. People don't want to look incompetent so they say "Feature X took 3x as long as it should have, because we had some tech debt". It's implied that the tech debt is resolved. But in most cases the reality is, the time was spent just working around the tech debt, and the tech debt is not resolved. And now you've entrenched even more workarounds and hacks that will make things worse. Compound interest baby.

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