A Complete Guide on Technical Debt

What is Technical Debt?

If you’ve been in the software industry for any period of time, chances are you’ve definitely heard the term “Technical debt”

In software development, the concept of Technical debt plays an important role. Here, the team makes trade-offs during the development process to handle any type of issues and difficulties that may arise in the future. Technical debt is also known as code debt, tech debt, or in some cases, design debt in software companies. It comes into play when there is unfinished work or when a project faces significant complications, and technical debt helps in completing such projects. You can recognize technical debt in the domain of software development when developers are juggling multiple tasks to create a system and write code.

Technical Debt(TD aka Code debt), is a broad concept that includes many of the decisions made and shortcuts taken during the software development cycle.Negative outcomes caused by technical debt typically take the form of badly designed code, deterioration of productivity, additional unplanned costs, delivery delays, and degradation in the quality of the product.

As per definition on Wikipedia:

In software development, or any other IT field (e.g., Infrastructure, Networking, etc.) Technical debt (also known as design debt or code debt) is the implied cost of future reworking required when choosing an easy but limited solution instead of a better approach that could take more time

Usually, technical debt arises when developers are making various compromises to meet targets or deadlines. It becomes more pronounced as software becomes more complex.

What Causes Technical Debt?

Technical debt can arise in Software development, and it’s a common problem that software engineers face in today’s world. There are several contributing factors, including:

• Lack of Testing: technical debt occurs when testing is inadequate and insufficient. Incomplete coding can introduce vulnerabilities and hidden bugs, resulting in higher costs. Releasing code without proper testing can lead to technical debt. Organizations must establish plans and techniques to address technical debt caused by…