Posts Tagged ‘Output’
Technical Debt: Assessment and Reduction
Below is the detailed outline for my August 8, 1:30-5:00PM Technical Debt Workshop in Agile 2011. I look forward to meeting you and interacting with you in the conference before, during and after this workshop!
Best,
Israel
Technical Debt: Assessment and Reduction
Part I: Technical Debt in the Overall Context of the Software Process
- A Holistic Model of the Software Process
- Two Aspects of Output
- Three Aspects of Technical Debt
- Six Aspects of Software
Part II: What Really is Technical Debt?
- What’s in a Metaphor?
- Code Analysis
- Time is Money
- Monetizing Technical Debt
- Typical Stakeholder Dialog Around Technical Debt
- Analysis of the Cassandra Code
- Project Dashboard
Part III : Case Study – NotMyCompany, Inc.
- NotMyCompany Highlights
- Modernizing Legacy Code
- Error Proneness
Part IV: The Tricky Nature of Technical Debt
- The Explicit Form of Technical Debt
- The Implicit Form of Technical Debt
- The Strategic Impact of Technical Debt
- No Good Strategy Following Prolonged Neglect
Part V: Unified Governance
- How We View Success
- Three Core Metrics
- Productivity, Affordability, Risk
- What is the Real ROI?
Part VI: Process Control Models
- A Typical Technical Debt Pattern
- Process Control View of Scrum
- Integration of Technical Debt in the Agile Process
- Using Statistical Process Control Methods
Part VII: Reducing Technical Debt
- A Framework for Thinking about and Acting on Technical Debt Issues
- Portfolio Governance
Part VIII: Takeaways
- Nine Simple Takeaway
- Connecting the dots
The Nine Transformative Aspects of the Technical Debt Metric
- The technical debt metric enables Continuous Inspection of the code through ultra-rapid feedback to the software process (see Figure 1 below).
- It shifts the emphasis in software development from proficiency in the software process to the output of the process.
- It changes the playing fields from qualitative assessment to quantitative measurement of the quality of the software.
- It is an effective antidote to the relentless function/feature pressure.
- It can be used with any software method, not “just” Agile.
- It is applicable to any amount of code.
- It can be applied at anypoint in time in the software life-cycle.
- These seven characteristics of the technical debt metric enable effective governance of the software process.
- The above characteristics of the technical debt metric enable effective governance of the software product portfolio.
Figure 1: Continuous Inspection
Why Spend a Whole Morning on Technical Debt?
In a little over a month Jim Highsmith and I will deliver our joint seminar on technical debt in the Cutter Summit. Here are eight characteristics of the technical debt metric that make it clear why you should spend 3.5 precious hours on the topic:
- The technical debt metric shifts the emphasis in software development from proficiency in the software process to the output of the process.
- It changes the playing fields from qualitative assessment to quantitative measurement of the quality of the software.
- It is an effective antidote to the relentless function/feature pressure.
- It can be used with any software method, not “just” Agile.
- It is applicable to any amount of code.
- It can be applied at any point in time in the software life-cycle.
- These six characteristics of the technical debt metric enable effective governance of the software process.
- The above characteristics of the technical debt metric enable effective governance of the software product portfolio.
The eight characteristics in the aggregate amount to technical debt metric as a ‘universal source of truth.’ It is a meaningful metric at any level of your organization and for any department in it. Moreover, it is applicable to any business process that is not yet taking software quality into account.
Jim and I look forward to meeting you at the summit and interacting with you in the technical debt seminar!
The Agile Executive 