Is Technical Debt Inevitable or Can You Prevent It?

So, How Do You Avoid It?

The question isn’t whether you can avoid technical debt. The question is whether you can handle it on time. And hygiene measures do exist to keep it manageable.

Describe Your Infrastructure as Code

Instead of manually setting up servers and systems by clicking buttons, define your entire infrastructure using code files. This approach, known as infrastructure as code (IaC), helps make sure your setups are consistent and repeatable, and human errors are reduced.

Manual setup creates problems because people make different choices. These small differences add up until your systems work differently from each other. 

But with IaC, your processes will follow the exact same steps every time. This means your testing environment will match your live system, eliminating bugs that only happen when customers start using your product.

Written instructions also create a permanent record. You can see exactly how your systems are built and who made a particular change. If one service breaks, it’s easy to roll back to an earlier, working version.

Write Documentation

Relying solely on people’s memories for important information can put your business at risk. If someone leaves or goes on vacation, nobody might know how to handle key processes. 

That’s why having clear documentation is so critical. It helps new team members get up to speed faster and keeps important information safe, even if people come and go. 

Run Automated Testing

Without automated testing, every update becomes a bit of a gamble. Sometimes fixing one part can accidentally break another, and these are only obvious when someone notices a bug or a customer complains. Furthermore, the larger your software becomes, the more likely these accidents are to happen.

With automated testing, humans don’t have to manually check if a service works after each change. Computers can run thousands of checks automatically and do it consistently every time.

Monitor Technical Health Metrics

We also highly recommend tracking technical metrics to understand the software’s condition. The following metrics provide early warning signals of a tech debt:

• Deployment frequency shows how smoothly your team can release new features. Healthy systems allow frequent, easy releases. Unhealthy systems, in contrast, make every release a stressful event that requires careful planning and multiple people involved.
  
  
• Lead time measures how long ideas take to reach customers. This includes everything from initial concept to a working feature in the customer’s hands. Long lead times often indicate technical problems that slow down development.
  
  
• Recovery time reveals how quickly you can fix problems when they occur. Systems weighed down with technical debt tend to take longer to diagnose and repair. Clean and organized systems can be fixed rapidly when issues come up.