Comments on: Elbow Room for Handling Technical Debt

By: Is There Something Inherently un-Agile About ERP Software? « The Agile Executive

Wed, 30 Dec 2009 11:47:03 +0000

[...] reduce your technical debt instead of trying total rewrite. Chances are you will struggle to find Elbow Room for Handling Technical Debt. My hunch is that once >50% of development resources are assigned to maintaining the software [...]

By: It Won’t Work Here « The Agile Executive

It Won’t Work Here « The Agile Executive — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 11:46:54 +0000

[...] Affordability: The question to ask is whether you can afford not to improve your software. Tools are readily available to quantify your company’s technical debt. Monetize the technical debt and include it as a liability line item in a pro forma balance sheet. Doing so is likely to shift the discussion from affordability to how to create elbow room for handling the technical debt. [...]

By: Technical Debt: Refactoring vis-a-vis Starting Afresh « The Agile Executive

Technical Debt: Refactoring vis-a-vis Starting Afresh « The Agile Executive — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:29:20 +0000

[...] simply continue a struggle that becomes more and more difficult over time. As indicated in the post Elbow Room for Handling Technical Debt, the second option is quite difficult to carry out if it is exercised at a late point in the [...]

By: Israel Gat

Israel Gat — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 11:51:29 +0000

1. Indeed, software bankruptcy is a powerful concept. Everyone gets in (at least intuitively) and it leaves no room to hide.
2. I am actually amidst compiling a post on the costs and implications of starting afresh. Attractive that it might look, starting afresh poses numerous problems IMHO. I will publish this post (on starting afresh) next week.

Israel

By: William Pietri

William Pietri — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 03:37:34 +0000

With some places I’ve had to introduce the concept of software bankruptcy. At some point, it makes little financial sense to keep investing in a code base with excess debt. It can be radically cheaper to start fresh.

Unfortunately, no matter how clear the numbers, many executives are unwilling to admit that they’ve gotten into so much technical debt that their project is worth less than nothing. Although they’re willing to accept that a collision-damaged car is totaled and should be scrapped, they just can’t (or won’t) understand the same thing about a software system.