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Technical debt or mess?

The other day, I had to work on a project that apparently had technical debt, according to a developer who had worked on it. When I opened it, I didn't see any technical debt, but rather a mess, only a mess. So let's be clear: technical debt IS NOT a mess. Technical debt is a choice, a considered, reasoned decision, which allows you to do what you have to do quickly, but also constrains you to be as professional as you can be if you want to have a chance to solve this debt one day, and you will have to. Your code must be clean, commented, well written. You have to test it, and you have to refactor it as much as you can. The mess? It's just a mess. Some low-quality and disorganized code, based on incompetence, or on laziness and unprofessionalism.

Technical debt must be a business-driven decision in line with a long-term strategy, it should never be a developer's choice. The business is the only department which can judge that a version of a product has to be released early, involving a delay on the next version as the technical team will have to solve the debt before developing other functionalities. The most important thing with technical debt is that in the end, the business has to win. This is a business call, a well-considered decision by people who see the big picture, whereas a mess is nothing more than a mess, and always ends up being a loss. A mess is always a loss. It is hard to read, hard to understand, hard to clean up and has absolutely no chance of paying off in the future.

Don't be messy.

February 2, 2017
  • Technical Debt