Tech debt can seriously impact a project if not properly managed. It leads to increased costs, slower delivery times, and lower quality code as complexity grows unchecked over time. Measuring and tracking technical debt using tools like SonarQube allows teams to define, measure, analyze, and improve areas of accidental complexity. This helps reduce debt, free up developer time for new features, and maintain predictability and quality as a project evolves. However, care must be taken not to shift focus too much to metrics or mandate thresholds at the expense of actual code quality improvements. Managing technical debt is important for long term products and codebases.

1. Tech debt will kill us
Managing technical debt at
enterprise scale with Sonarqube
by Julian Warszawski

2. What is tech debt
• Abstract term
• Lots of definitions
• Not useful

3. Which terms associate with tech debt?
pressure
long term goals
short term goals
clean code
hack
accidental design
automation
workaround

4. What is tech debt
forget code quality
forget bug count
forget engineers morale
Delivery Speed ~ 1/Tech Debt
Only thing to know about effects of tech debt

5. Why will it kill us
It takes 2 months
for anyone to ramp
up on this
codebase
It used to take 5
people to keep
up. Now it is 25.
95% of the
team is fixing
bugs
It will be easier
to rewrite this
component
than extend it.

6. Why delivery speed drops?
• Designing from scratch is super fast
• After first sprint you don’t design from scratch
• Existing complexity slows down further design
• Complexity ALWAYS grows
• There is domain complexity and accidental
complexity
• You CAN control accidental complexity

7. What can we do
src: sixsigmadaily.com

8. Define
Accidental complexity
Untested code
Tangled packages
Lack of cohesion
Copy-paste code
not following best practices

9. Measure
• Java: checkstyle, pmd, jacoco, pitest, …
• Python: Pylint
• C++: cppcheck, gcov, custom plugins.
• Other languages: C#, SQL, PHP, Flex, XML,
Groovy and others

10. Analyze

11. Improve

12. Control
compile
unit testing
integration
testing
quality gate
functional
testing
ship it

13. Sonarqube
sonar dashboard sonar runner
source
repo
CI Server
commit pull
run
publish

14. DEMO
demo

15. What’s in it for DEV
Less tech
debt
More time
for features
better
software
Ambitious DEV
My code will
be PROLazy DEV
Less possibility
for something
to break. No
STRESS

16. What’s in it for PM
Less tech
debt
More time
for features
predictability
Agile PM
We can deliver
fasterWaterfall PM
Finally
everything
goes according
to PLAN

17. What’s in it for CEO
Less tech debt
More time for
features
improved
delivery
capabilities
Fresh CEO
I don’t have to
worry about
BAU, can focus
on strategy
Retiring CEO
Clients are
happy, stocks
are up

18. Doubts
• This does not present REAL design debt. It
hides the real design debt.
• Yet another step in our build pipeline. Can we
afford it?
• Focus will be shifted from delivering products
to improving sonar metrics.

19. This is not REAL design debt
• Accidental complexity is real design debt
• Untested code is real design debt
• Accurate correlates of design problems
• Degradation: correlate of process problems
• By observing symptoms, you can be proactive

20. Another step in the pipeline
• No, if set up correctly
• Quality gates – warnings and fails
• Does not have to monitor every commit
(nightly checks)
• Do not block the pipeline, allow fast reverts
• Focus on prevention

21. Focus shifted to improving metrics
• These metrics are symptoms, not the essence
• You don’t fix tech debt by just fixing compiler
warnings, test coverage or static violations
• Do not compete for grades
• DO NOT MANDATE THRESHOLDS!!!

22. DO NOT MANDATE THRESHOLDS
• People should work 8 hours a day
• Do you have alerts if they leave job too early?
• Thresholds promote ignorance
• E. g. it is more important to write good tests
than achieving the coverage goal
• Boy scout rule: Leave the code simpler and
cleaner than it was when you saw it.

23. Who benefits more
Game Development
Fire and forget
Sales POC
Delivering in 1 month more critical than future-proofing
Codebase is representing a core product
Product addresses long term strategy
Product will be extended for years
little value lots of value

24. QUESTIONS
any