Technical Debt

My Friday Thought: It’s funny how the incremental spoons of porridge with the corresponding mess is somewhat similar to delivering of software whilst learning about it and without worrying about technical debt. When should a team clean its face of porridge.

For me the most important thing here is the visibility of technical debt which with porridge is easy to see and have an informed decision on. If you don't collate the information on what technical debt you are incurring, then you don't really know how much in a mess you are. You need to have a team/service health check to ensure you have the balance right for where the service/team is right now.

Right, here, is somewhat subjective: during minimal large feature changes, your technical debt levels should be really low; during tight timescales on features you might make an informed decision to take on more debt now and pay it back at a later date. Knowing what you have and what you are willing to live with is important for the whole team.