You're adding new features to a complex system. How do you avoid piling up technical debt?
When adding new features to a complex system, it's essential to maintain code quality and prevent future headaches. Here's how:
What strategies have worked for you in managing technical debt?
You're adding new features to a complex system. How do you avoid piling up technical debt?
When adding new features to a complex system, it's essential to maintain code quality and prevent future headaches. Here's how:
What strategies have worked for you in managing technical debt?
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As software engineer with over 10 years experience : 1. Understand the system's architecture: Analyze dependencies and constraints before making changes. 2. Write clean code: Focus on maintainable and well-documented code while leveraging code reviews. 3. Refactor incrementally: Improve legacy code in small steps as part of feature development. 4. Promote modularity: Add new features with minimal coupling and clear separation of concerns. 5. Automate testing: Implement robust unit, integration, and regression tests to prevent bugs. 6. Document technical debt: If unavoidable, document it and plan for resolution. The goal is to balance immediate needs with the long-term stability of the system.
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To avoid technical debt when adding features to a complex system, start by getting a clear understanding of the architecture, tech stack, and dependencies. Next, consult with Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) on your implementation plan and get their valuable insights and identify potential risks. Once you have a solid grasp, implement changes incrementally, ensuring each update is followed by thorough testing. This cautious, collaborative approach helps maintain system stability, reduces errors, and minimizes technical debt while ensuring high-quality feature integration.
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Consider how your changes will interact with the existing system and what will need to be refactored in the existing system to accommodate your new changes. Before you add your changes, refactor the existing system and ensure it works as before. Then add your new changes and ensure you did not increase the tech and design debt. This avoids new debt.
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With over 5 years of experience in software analytics and empirical software engineering, I experienced and so learned some precautions for TD: 1. Pre-commit hooks and CI pipelines enforcing best practices without manual effort 2. Enforce writing lightweight documentation. Developers have to read the documentation but do not like to write it. Focus on the why behind decisions like ADR and keep it short. 3. Last but not least, definitely use a software analytics tool that takes an x-ray of the repository and has well-defined metrics regarding Technical Debt, Knowledge Distribution, and Architecture Quality. Feel free to ask me if you don't know such a tool. I can share my experiences with such tools.
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To avoid piling up technical debt when adding new features, my approach would be: 1. Prioritize maintainability: Write clean, modular, and well-tested code. 2. Conduct code reviews: Ensure adherence to coding standards and catch issues early through peer reviews. 3. Refactor regularly: Continuously simplify and optimize existing code as part of feature integration. 4. Document changes: Maintain clear, up-to-date documentation for better system understanding. 5. Automate testing: Implement CI/CD pipelines with automated tests to catch regressions and ensure reliability.
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To avoid piling up technical debt while adding new features, teams should prioritize code quality through thorough code reviews and automated testing. Adopting agile practices, such as iterative development and regular refactoring, can help maintain a manageable scope. Keeping clear documentation, including up-to-date code comments and system architecture, is essential for clarity. Utilizing appropriate design patterns promotes maintainability, while establishing consistent coding standards ensures uniformity across the team. Focusing on delivering a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) helps limit feature scope, and implementing CI/CD pipelines automates testing and deployment processes.
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I think one perspective is the technical perspective how to do it best, e.g. if needed refactor before tackling the new feature if it is a "bigger" one, or implementing a minimal version of it and refactoring within the next iteration. The other more important perspective is to get the buy-in of your product owner (PO) or project manager (PM). * Make it a regular habit to spent 10% on reducing tech debt in each iteration. * Monitor and measure the effort by putting up tech debt tickets at least to be opened and closed * Measure and show your PO/PM that it was worth effort, by being able to spend a high percentage of effort on features than on bug-fixing * Use tools do get also quantitative numbers to base your statements on
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Technical debt is a reality in every growing system, but managing it proactively makes all the difference. On one project, we prioritized speed over structure to rapidly add features to an e-commerce platform. Within months, the codebase became hard to maintain, forcing us to rethink our approach. We implemented practices like regular code reviews, a 'debt register' for tracking issues, and automated testing to ensure quality. Refactoring became part of every sprint. Over time, we reduced bugs and made the system scalable. This taught me the value of investing upfront in modular solutions and clean, maintainable code—it saves countless hours in the long run.
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To avoid technical debt when adding features, focus on proactive maintenance and quality practices. Design for scalability and maintainability, avoiding shortcuts that lead to long-term issues. Enforce regular code reviews to catch problems early, ensure adherence to best practices, and foster collaborative improvements. Incorporate incremental refactoring during development to optimize the codebase continuously. Automate testing—unit, integration, and regression tests—to maintain stability as new features are added. Prioritize clear and thorough documentation to help current and future developers understand the system. These strategies ensure sustainable growth and minimize technical debt over time.
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Using a standard way of sandbox testing, monitoring, deploying with feedback schedules and optimization updates helps manage better sprint performance and improvement(s). Allowing for teams not to get overwhelmed and harnessing the controlled workflow while ensuring quality control. Technical debt should be minimized especially in businesses critical functions. Sometimes it’s best to split the team into smaller groups to work on a more complex problem that needs more attention and then combine the solutions together that can be used in the most optimal way giving time and resource constraints. Sometimes having outsourced the less critical software maintenance can also be an option if the team cannot manage workload.
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