The document discusses technical debt as a metaphor for development inefficiencies, resembling financial debt where costly consequences can accrue without quantifiable measures. It emphasizes the need for teams to understand and address technical debt through strategies like prioritization and visualizing debt impact, while encouraging incremental improvements. The document also provides interactive exercises to help teams better grasp the effects of technical debt and strategies to manage it.

1. Technical Debt –
Understanding Its
Sources and Impacts
Through a Game
David Croley - @davidcroley

2. David Croley
Agile Velocity
Principal Consultant
Certified Scrum Manager ( CSM)
@davidcroley
dcroley@agilevelocity.com
Transforming Technology Organizations
2

3. We’d prefer to deliver a fast, steady
stream of new features…

4. But sometimes delivery feels slow, even
stagnant.
CC BY 2.0 http://www.flickr.com/photos/usfwspacific/6121377305/

5. And we hope it doesn’t feel like this!

6. Technical Debt
A useful metaphor similar to financial debt
“Interest” is incurred in the form of costlier development
effort
Technical Debt can be paid down through refactoring the
implementation
Unlike monetary debt, Technical Debt is difficult to
quantify

7. Development Investment
Visible Invisible
Positive
Value
Negative
Value
Features
Bugs
Architecture
*ilities
Logging, metrics,
A/B Testing, etc.
Tech
Debt

8. Good and Bad Debt
Martin Fowler’s Technical Debt Quadrants
http://www.martinfowler.com/bliki/TechnicalDebtQuadrant.html

9. No Blame
Tech Debt is often the result of deliberate
decisions or incomplete knowledge
Even perfectly functioning teams will
incur Tech Debt
Change over time is another source of
Tech Debt

10. Late Deliveries
Mounting
Defects
Rising Development Costs
Poor Customer
Responsiveness
Long Delivery Times
Frustrated and Poor
Performing Teams
Impact of Tech Debt

11. Impact of Technical Debt
“Agile Project Management”, Jim Highsmith, second edition

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

14. 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
Set up your board as follows

16. 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

17. 25
-35
X

18. 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

19. -35
25
10
15
15
X

20. 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
Iteration Card
Cost: 10
Database is getting large and complex. We need to add
automated migrations to reduce manual work and
support refactoring.
Impact: -5

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

22. -35
25
X

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

24. Theoretical Capacity
Technical Debt
Productivity
Time

25. Debrief
So how did it go?
What strategy did your team use to mix
features and debt?
Is it realistic?

26. Simplifications
Tech debt impact is usually not so
quantifiable.
Delivering significantly fewer features per
sprint may be unrealistic.
Cost to fix and impact may increase over
time

27. Capture your debt

28. Visualize and Estimate

29. Tools and Techniques
Use tools like SonarQube, FindBugs, and PMD to help
find and measure tech debt
Ask the team
Track defects by location in the code
Make sure the team feels empowered to fix small debt
issues every day

30. Need to invest time, team needs slack

31. Boy Scout slide
Incrementally make your code better

32. Keys to Prioritizing Technical Debt
Have a Clear Definition of Done - Acceptance Criteria
Articulate Business Value
Work Incrementally - Breakdown Items
Make Visible - Add to the Backlog
Prioritize/ Allocate Time

33. 21
21
1
2
1 2 1 1
One Backlog Prioritized by the Product Owner
Feature Story
Technical Debt Story

34. 21
21
1
2
1211
21
21
1
2
1211
Feature Story
Technical Debt Story
Two Backlogs Prioritized Independently
80/20 Allocation Strategy

35. Discuss how you could apply these
concepts to help your teams.

36. For More Information:
Working Effectivelywith Legacy Code by Michael Feathers
Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanshipby Robert C. Martin
http://www.ontechnicaldebt.com
https://medium.com/@joaomilho/festina-lente-e29070811b84(Tech debt 101)

37. David Croley – dcroley@agilevelocity.com
Website – AgileVelocity.com
Blog – AustinAgile.com
Twitter - @austinagile, @davidcroley
Thanks!