[Misc] Technical Debt

Recently I stumbled over a smart blog entry about the 'technical debt' (link).

The idea is quite nice: imagine everyone would have a 'perfect' software system in mind to be build. Well in fact we live in a 'real world' and a 100% perfect project is always a goal but not the current status. But of course we all strive for 100% as we strive for 100% test coverage.

But the fact is that some companies / developers build better code and some build a little worse code. Now imaging if we could measure this 'worsiness'. Of course a 100% accurate and correct measurement is not possible and subjective. But sonar from codehaus tries to go that way.

Their technical debt is shown:

• in $ (!!! ouch this hurts)
• in a spider figure
• in the form of numbers you can drill down
  

What they do is they measure at least:

• The Code coverage
• The Complexity
• The Code Duplication
• The Violations
• The Comments
  

There might be more measurements to be integrated soon. And you will surely agree that code comments should have a different weight then the code complexity. Should they?! But what I suggested in my comment is, that it would be great if this measurable debt would be a standard for all projects.

Software developering companies could use a low debt as a marketing instrument. And they likely sell more! The buyer will check the technical debt of the software they buy. As a usual procedure. If the debt is low, the product might be a good and changeable investment that can grow.

If the debt is high the vendor has a problem. Vendors might think they can lock buyers in because they don't check the technical debt. But I am sure time will change and tools like this will be standard in IDEs in 5 to 10 years. Even to check projects in multiple languages.

So for me it's time to face the boss with hard dollars he has to pay back. Sooner or later. The later the more expensive. Let's fight for a technical debt / good metrics analysis as a common procedure!

Stefan Edlich