This document discusses technical debt and strategies for managing and selling technical debt rearchitecture projects. It defines technical debt as work that is postponed to a later time, such as lack of testing or architecture planning. While some debt can be useful for time to market goals, ignoring debt accumulation can slow a project over time. The document provides examples of technical debt elements to examine in a codebase and recommends conducting due diligence to understand existing debt. It also presents stories and metaphors to help explain the risks of debt to business stakeholders and the value of rearchitecture projects when needed.

1. Technical Debt and Selling
Rearchitecture
1
SERGEY SUNDUKOVSKIY PH.D.

2. Introduction
2

3. Agenda
3

4. Technical Debt
4
Things slow down

5. Debt
5
Everything you want to do “Later” is DEBT
Let’s document later
 Let’s test later
 Let’s architect later
 Let’s refactor later

Debt Misconceptions
All debt is bad
 No debt is great
 Taking on debt always gets you there faster


6. Debt (Leverageable)
6

7. Leveraging Debt
7
Debt Leverage
Time to market – If taking on debt gets you to market
disproportionately faster
 Time to contact – If strategic contract is at stake debt might be
worth it
 Time to funding – If funding is at stake debt might be worth it
 Time to survival – Debt is irrelevant if there is no tomorrow

Unacceptable Debt
Non-leveragable debt
 Debt due to ignorance


8. Technical Debt Elements
8
Technical Debt Elements
Lack of Architectural Blueprint
 Lack of Unit Testing
 Lack of Integration Testing
 Lack of Code Reviews
 Lack of Starter Platform
 Lack of Starter Framework
 Lack of Technical Design
 Lack of Development Recipes


9. Selling Debt Management
9

10. Only If You Must
10
Debt Management Is Very Hard To Sell
Cause and effect is not immediately apparent
 ROI is very difficult to quantify
 Definition of done is hard to come up with
 Perpetual projects are not crowd pleasers
 Users are not even aware that backend of apps even exists. UX/UI
in user’s mind is the app itself


11. Only If You Must (cont.)
11
If You Can Help It, Do Not Sell It
Schedule feature holidays (every 5th release)
 Refactor as you go
 Make debt management as part of the process
 Give estimates considering debt management
 Invite outside experts

If You Must Sell It
Tell CEO/CTO story
 Use aircraft maintenance strategy


12. Debt Story
12
I have not seen organs like this

13. Common Story
13
CEOs Tale
We were very productive
 We kicked ass
 We became complacent
 I fired them all
 I hired a new team
 They are not productive either
 Must have chosen wrong
 I fired them all
 SAVE ME


14. Common Story
14
CTOs Tale
We were very productive through debt accumulation
 We kicked ass but burned out
 We slowed down due to increasing debt support
 We got fired
 New team got hired
 It does not know where skeletons are buried
 We got fired as well
 I have Not Seen Organs Like These


15. Support to Innovation Ratio
15
Year 1
Year 2
Year 3
Support
(15%)
Innovation
(85%)
Support
(50%)
Support
(85%)
Innovation
(50%)
Innovation
(15%)
Support cost is a euphemism for debt

16. Debt Creeps Up on You
16
Yup it is kind of like that

17. Broken Window Theory
17
One broken window leads to ruin

18. Broken Window Theory
18
Do sweat the small stuff

19. Due Diligence
19
Due Diligence is a an exercise of debt discovery

20. Case Study 1 (Sample Due Diligence)
20
No Middle Tier Frameworks
Code Entanglement
Lots of Dead Code
Poor Exception Handling
High Coupling
Low Encapsulation
Absence of Higher Order Services
Lack of Documented Architectural Blueprint

21. Case Study 1 (Sample Due Diligence)
21
What does this mean?
Increased Maintenance Cost
 Difficulty Extending
 Difficulty Hiring
 Developer Lock In
 Technical “Debt” That Needs To Be Repaid

Debt quantification

$200K

22. Case Study 1 (Recommendations)
22
Refactor dead code
Refactor code entanglement
Refactor logic segmentation
Introduce architectural blueprint
Introduce unit, integration and functional tests
Introduce persistence and decency injection frameworks
Implement CIA/CEO principles

23. Case Study 2 (Rearchitecture)
23
Sold It as a Project, Failed to Complete
Political “hot” potato
 No interim deliverable
 Very expensive
 Affected by business downturn
