Technical Debt In Practice

The practical implications of technical debt for the entire software lifecycle; with examples and case studies. Technical debt in software is incurred when developers take shortcuts and make ill-advised technical decisions in the initial phases of a project, only to be confronted with the need for costly and labor-intensive workarounds later. This book offers advice on how to avoid technical debt, how to locate its sources, and how to remove it. It focuses on the practical implications of technical debt for the entire software life cycle, with examples and case studies from companies that range from Boeing to Twitter. Technical debt is normal; it is part of most iterative development processes. But if debt is ignored, over time it may become unmanageably complex, requiring developers to spend all of their effort fixing bugs, with no time to add new features--and after all, new features are what customers really value. The authors explain how to monitor technical debt, how to measure it, and how and when to pay it down. Broadening the conventional definition of technical debt, they cover requirements debt, implementation debt, testing debt, architecture debt, documentation debt, deployment debt, and social debt. They intersperse technical discussions with "Voice of the Practitioner" sidebars that detail real-world experiences with a variety of technical debt issues.

“This is an incredibly wise and useful book. The authors have considerable real-world experience in delivering quality systems that matter, and their expertise shines through in these pages. Here you will learn what technical debt is, what is it not, how to manage it, and how to pay it down in responsible ways. This is a book I wish I had when I was just beginning my career. The authors present a myriad of case studies, born from years of experience, and offer a multitude of actionable insights for how to apply it to your project.” –Grady Booch, IBM Fellow Master Best Practices for Managing Technical Debt to Promote Software Quality and Productivity As software systems mature, earlier design or code decisions made in the context of budget or schedule constraints increasingly impede evolution and innovation. This phenomenon is called technical debt, and practical solutions exist. In Managing Technical Debt, three leading experts introduce integrated, empirically developed principles and practices that any software professional can use to gain control of technical debt in any software system. Using real-life examples, the authors explain the forms of technical debt that afflict software-intensive systems, their root causes, and their impacts. They introduce proven approaches for identifying and assessing specific sources of technical debt, limiting new debt, and “paying off” debt over time. They describe how to establish managing technical debt as a core software engineering practice in your organization. Discover how technical debt damages manageability, quality, productivity, and morale–and what you can do about it Clarify root causes of debt, including the linked roles of business goals, source code, architecture, testing, and infrastructure Identify technical debt items, and analyze their costs so you can prioritize action Choose the right solution for each technical debt item: eliminate, reduce, or mitigate Integrate software engineering practices that minimize new debt Managing Technical Debt will be a valuable resource for every software professional who wants to accelerate innovation in existing systems, or build new systems that will be easier to maintain and evolve.

Are you working on a codebase where cost overruns, death marches, and heroic fights with legacy code monsters are the norm? Battle these adversaries with novel ways to identify and prioritize technical debt, based on behavioral data from how developers work with code. And that's just for starters. Because good code involves social design, as well as technical design, you can find surprising dependencies between people and code to resolve coordination bottlenecks among teams. Best of all, the techniques build on behavioral data that you already have: your version-control system. Join the fight for better code! Use statistics and data science to uncover both problematic code and the behavioral patterns of the developers who build your software. This combination gives you insights you can't get from the code alone. Use these insights to prioritize refactoring needs, measure their effect, find implicit dependencies between different modules, and automatically create knowledge maps of your system based on actual code contributions. In a radical, much-needed change from common practice, guide organizational decisions with objective data by measuring how well your development teams align with the software architecture. Discover a comprehensive set of practical analysis techniques based on version-control data, where each point is illustrated with a case study from a real-world codebase. Because the techniques are language neutral, you can apply them to your own code no matter what programming language you use. Guide organizational decisions with objective data by measuring how well your development teams align with the software architecture. Apply research findings from social psychology to software development, ensuring you get the tools you need to coach your organization towards better code. If you're an experienced programmer, software architect, or technical manager, you'll get a new perspective that will change how you work with code. What You Need: You don't have to install anything to follow along in the book. TThe case studies in the book use well-known open source projects hosted on GitHub. You'll use CodeScene, a free software analysis tool for open source projects, for the case studies. We also discuss alternative tooling options where they exist.

Awareness of design smells – indicators of common design problems – helps developers or software engineers understand mistakes made while designing, what design principles were overlooked or misapplied, and what principles need to be applied properly to address those smells through refactoring. Developers and software engineers may "know" principles and patterns, but are not aware of the "smells" that exist in their design because of wrong or mis-application of principles or patterns. These smells tend to contribute heavily to technical debt – further time owed to fix projects thought to be complete – and need to be addressed via proper refactoring. Refactoring for Software Design Smells presents 25 structural design smells, their role in identifying design issues, and potential refactoring solutions. Organized across common areas of software design, each smell is presented with diagrams and examples illustrating the poor design practices and the problems that result, creating a catalog of nuggets of readily usable information that developers or engineers can apply in their projects. The authors distill their research and experience as consultants and trainers, providing insights that have been used to improve refactoring and reduce the time and costs of managing software projects. Along the way they recount anecdotes from actual projects on which the relevant smell helped address a design issue. Contains a comprehensive catalog of 25 structural design smells (organized around four fundamental design principles) that contribute to technical debt in software projects Presents a unique naming scheme for smells that helps understand the cause of a smell as well as points toward its potential refactoring Includes illustrative examples that showcase the poor design practices underlying a smell and the problems that result Covers pragmatic techniques for refactoring design smells to manage technical debt and to create and maintain high-quality software in practice Presents insightful anecdotes and case studies drawn from the trenches of real-world projects

The practical implications of technical debt for the entire software lifecycle; with examples and case studies. Technical debt in software is incurred when developers take shortcuts and make ill-advised technical decisions in the initial phases of a project, only to be confronted with the need for costly and labor-intensive workarounds later. This book offers advice on how to avoid technical debt, how to locate its sources, and how to remove it. It focuses on the practical implications of technical debt for the entire software life cycle, with examples and case studies from companies that range from Boeing to Twitter. Technical debt is normal; it is part of most iterative development processes. But if debt is ignored, over time it may become unmanageably complex, requiring developers to spend all of their effort fixing bugs, with no time to add new features--and after all, new features are what customers really value. The authors explain how to monitor technical debt, how to measure it, and how and when to pay it down. Broadening the conventional definition of technical debt, they cover requirements debt, implementation debt, testing debt, architecture debt, documentation debt, deployment debt, and social debt. They intersperse technical discussions with "Voice of the Practitioner" sidebars that detail real-world experiences with a variety of technical debt issues.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 26th International Working Conference on Requirements Engineering - Foundation for Software Quality, REFSQ 2020, which was due to be held in Pisa, Italy, in March 2020. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic the conference was held virtually in June 2020. The 14 full papers and 7 short papers in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 84 submissions. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: requirements specification; requirements documentation; privacy and legal requirements; stakeholders feedback and training; agile methods and requirements comprehension; requirements modelling; requirements visualization.

Today, software engineers need to know not only how to program effectively but also how to develop proper engineering practices to make their codebase sustainable and healthy. This book emphasizes this difference between programming and software engineering. How can software engineers manage a living codebase that evolves and responds to changing requirements and demands over the length of its life? Based on their experience at Google, software engineers Titus Winters and Hyrum Wright, along with technical writer Tom Manshreck, present a candid and insightful look at how some of the world’s leading practitioners construct and maintain software. This book covers Google’s unique engineering culture, processes, and tools and how these aspects contribute to the effectiveness of an engineering organization. You’ll explore three fundamental principles that software organizations should keep in mind when designing, architecting, writing, and maintaining code: How time affects the sustainability of software and how to make your code resilient over time How scale affects the viability of software practices within an engineering organization What trade-offs a typical engineer needs to make when evaluating design and development decisions

A human-centric guide to solving complex problems in engineering management, from sizing teams to handling technical debt. There’s a saying that people don’t leave companies, they leave managers. Management is a key part of any organization, yet the discipline is often self-taught and unstructured. Getting to the good solutions for complex management challenges can make the difference between fulfillment and frustration for teams—and, ultimately, between the success and failure of companies. Will Larson’s An Elegant Puzzle focuses on the particular challenges of engineering management—from sizing teams to handling technical debt to performing succession planning—and provides a path to the good solutions. Drawing from his experience at Digg, Uber, and Stripe, Larson has developed a thoughtful approach to engineering management for leaders of all levels at companies of all sizes. An Elegant Puzzle balances structured principles and human-centric thinking to help any leader create more effective and rewarding organizations for engineers to thrive in.