Technical debt a metaphor that refers to the eventual consequences of poor or evolving software architecture and software development within a codebase. The technical debt can be defined of as work that needs to be done to adapt a software to the best practices. In this blog post, Bastian Buch explains the step used in his organisation to reduce technical debt in an Agile way.
The post describes in detail the following step by step approach to reduce technical debt:
1. Involve the Product Owner and “promote” him to be the sponsor of technical debt reduction.
2. Inventory and structure known technical debt
3. Agile prioritization and estimation of the work
4. Analysis of the data and development of the right strategy.
5. Integration into the existing development process.
Bastian Buch conclusion is that “like the product owner for features the team is responsible to make the debt transparent and legitimize the work to reduce this debt. Who if not the developers themselves can do this?”