Technical Debt Case Study

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1) What is Technical Debt and why should you or your team and company worry about it?
If a developer implements a quick fix to a code base to accommodate either a change in requirement or bug or some other case, to show that code base meets the expectations. Quick fixes usually do not follow the system architectural design and best practices, and do not pay attention to code readability and needs a revisit in near future to make it proper. Such quick fixes or any code changes that deviates from the code design and needing some rework before saying the task is completed are known as Technical debts.
If quick fixes are not revisited to bring the design back to proper position, further bug fixes or change requirements may use the ill designed …show more content…

If the developer / team do not revisit the quick fix to bring the design to conform to the good design solution, the technical debt stays and grows as changes to code base made on top of quick fix. If there are lot of quick fixes and code changes, that deviate from the good design and development do not attempt to refactor, code base will reach a point where it will be anticipate the effects of quick fixes, understand code, make changes or extend functionalities, and cost of change goes out of proportion, at this point development and/or management may decide to abandon and rebuilt the code base from scratch. This way of abandoning a code base is called as technical …show more content…

If refactoring is practiced as a part of development plan, it will give a chance for developers to review the code changes and see whether the code is per the design and also to address technical debts if any. Unless there is a task for it. Periodical refactoring helps in paying off technical debt when it is small and avoid accumulation, which can eventually lead to technical bankruptcy. Refactoring helps in positioning the code, where it will easy to read, understand and

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