Cold debt

My Friday Thought: No one complains at a person when they get that 'cold' that means they spend a little time recovering to get back to their full self. Technical Debt is somewhat the same (apart from the no complaining), if you don't spend time on it, it will only result in you overall slowing down.

Technical Debt shouldn't be a dirty word in the ever changing world we live it will always be present. Tech changes and there are improvements we can make, so refactoring the code/changing how we implemented something before/ensuring we are using the right library versions for today all form part of this.

Technical Debt or work that doesn't within itself appear to offer business value will also accumulate. It is like the clothes we wash, it is a cycle that is continuous, but we want to ensure it doesn't become too overwhelming. That is where we have increased costs, reduced reliability and overall become slower.

Our body focuses on overcoming our cold when we catch one, other things will slow down a little, but if we deal with it quickly then we are back to full speed soon enough. We can also make sure we don't burn ourselves out which increases our changes of catching a cold. Similar for technical debt, we need to ensure we take the vitamins (continuously delivering small chunks of technical debt/improvements done in line with business value) so that the overall effects are reduced.