This document discusses how to keep product development teams moving fast while managing technical debt. It describes two types of technical debt: intentional debt from conscious tradeoffs and unintentional debt from poor practices. Technical debt leads to long delivery times, defects, and frustrated teams in a vicious cycle. The document recommends continuous integration, test automation, refactoring, and peer review to manage debt. It includes an exercise where teams plan iterations considering feature work and technical debt remediation to maximize throughput over time. The key lessons are to capture, visualize and estimate technical debt, invest time in remediation while allowing team slack, in order to maintain a fast and steady development pace.

1. HOW TO KEEP YOUR
PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
TEAMS GOING FAST
Product Camp Austin 11

3. As you come in, find someone in
the room and discuss what you
know about Technical Debt

4. We’d prefer a fast, steady stream
of new features…

5. But sometimes it feels more like
this

6. Long Delivery Times
Mounting Defects
Rising Development Costs
Poor Customer Responsiveness
Late Deliveries
Frustrated and Poor Performing
Teams

9. Intentional Debt
Temporary
Code
Business Pressure
Delayed
Testing
Other
Conscious
Tradeoffs

10. Unintentional Debt
Poor Code
or Design
Business Pressure
Poor Practices
Inflexible
Software
Lack of understanding
Poor
design/architecture
Unintended
Complexity
Poor design

11. A Vicious Cycle
Time
Pressure
Poorly
Implemented
Features
Late Delivery

12. Continuous Integration

13. Test (and other) Automation

14. Refactoring - would you trust
delivery of your products over this
road?

15. Peer Review

16. http://jimhighsmith.com/the-financial-implications-of-technical-debt/
Jim Highsmith’s Technical Debt Graph
Rewrite!

17. Let’s do an exercise to understand
the concept further.
Form into Teams of at least 4
people.

18. Feature
Cost: 15
Feature
Cost: 10
Feature
Cost: 5
Technical Debt
Cost 15
Impact -10
Technical Debt
Cost 15
Impact -10
Technical Debt
Cost 10
Impact -5
Technical Debt
Cost 5
Impact -5
Technical Debt
Cost 5
Impact -5
Iteration Card
Setup your board as follows

19. Feature
Cost: 15
Feature
Cost: 10
Feature
Cost: 5
Technical Debt
Cost 15
Impact -10
Technical Debt
Cost 15
Impact -10
Technical Debt
Cost 10
Impact -5
Technical Debt
Cost 5
Impact -5
Technical Debt
Cost 5
Impact -5
Iteration Card
Add up the total impact of all
technical debt items
-35

20. 0"
10"
20"
30"
40"
50"
60"
70"
Itera/ on"1" Itera/ on"2" Itera/ on"3" Itera/ on"4" Itera/ on"5"
Theori/ cal"Capacity" Technical"Debt"Impact"
-35
25
X

21. 0"
10"
20"
30"
40"
50"
60"
70"
Itera/ on"1" Itera/ on"2" Itera/ on"3" Itera/ on"4" Itera/ on"5"
Theori/ cal"Capacity" Technical"Debt"Impact"

22. Feature
Cost: 10
Feature
Cost: 15
Feature
Cost: 10
Technical Debt
Cost 15
Impact -10
Technical Debt
Cost 15
Impact -10
Technical Debt
Cost 10
Impact -5
Technical Debt
Cost 5
Impact -5
Technical Debt
Cost 5
Impact -5
Iteration Card
You have 25 Points to Spend
Select the cards you want to spend your points on.
No partially done work.
Feature
Cost: 5
Feature
Cost: 5

23. 0"
10"
20"
30"
40"
50"
60"
70"
Itera/ on"1" Itera/ on"2" Itera/ on"3" Itera/ on"4" Itera/ on"5"
Theori/ cal"Capacity" Technical"Debt"Impact"
-35
25
10
15
15
X

24. The goal is to complete as many
feature points at the end of 5
iterations.
Go!

25. The goal is to complete as many
feature points at the end of 5
iterations.
Stop!

26. Theoretical Capacity
Technical Debt
Productivity
Time

27. In order to go fast we need a
focus on Craftsmanship

28. Capture your debt

29. Visualize and estimate

30. Need to invest time, team needs
slack

31. Discuss how you could apply these
concepts to help your teams go
fast.