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Technical debt always has the same 3 questions:

1. How much is the technical debt really costing us?

2. How much will it cost to pay down this debt?

3. How will I know it is time to pay down this debt?

So how does one answer all of these questions in a way that can be understood by a project stakeholder?

1. Keep track of time spent working around the debt

find a way to measure your pain in a quantifiable manner that can be perceived by anyone as money and time wasted.

Answers the question: “How much is the technical debt really costing us?”

 

2. Estimate how much it will take to pay off the debt

Estimating how much time and effort it will take to pay off the debt is perhaps the easiest of the questions to answer. Simply put together your battle plan for the refactor and estimate it out. Feathers in Working Effectively with Legacy Code might even suggest actually doing the refactor 70% through and then throw it away just to truly understand the size and steps to support the change for real.

Answers the question: “How much will it cost to pay down this debt?”

3. Determine a tipping point of when it makes sense to refinance (pay it off)

Now that we have measured both the cost of the debt (debt interest) and the cost of the refactor (debt refinance costs), we can frame in the answer to if it makes sense to eliminate the debt by using a house mortgage analogy.

The exact same goes for software: if the data access layer is causing us 60 hours a month in lost time, and it will cost 300 hours to refactor, does it make sense to pay this off right now knowing we will see a return in productivity in 5 months?

Answers the question: “How will I know it is time to pay down this debt?”

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