Getting Into Technical Debt

So, this is something I learned on the Certified ScrumMaster course by Danube Technologies.

It really clarified for me that any sense of control over software deadlines is, pretty much, only a ‘perceived’ sense of control.

Yes, we can strongarm, use peer pressure or rigid authority to make developers work longer hours, but then they spent more time idling during the day. Someone, somewhere has written a great article on it (Note, after spending an hour looking at Joel On Software thinking the link I wanted was there: Link it here when found)

Anyway, the graph – let me explain….

A development team has a normal work rate (given all things are equal, interruptions, bug fix workload, training , yadda yadda…) in this case the work rate is 30 ‘units’ in a 15 day period (the red line). Supposing we ‘force’ them to up their productivity to 40 units in a 15 day period (dotted green line). They will work at their normal rate initially and then soon recognise that this will not meet the deadline – at that point they ‘speed up’ (this is the change in the solid green line at the 7 day point).

What you have actually done (most likely) is generated a ‘technical debt’ – because the way the developers ‘sped up’ (wrote more code) was by sacrificing some other aspect of the development (quality, test coverage, peer reviews etc).

So you have a ‘technical debt’ that needs to be made up during the next period. Even if we go back to the normal rate of work we are not going to get 30 units done in the 15 days, oh no, first we have to make up the debt, then start on the 30 units – which will likely need ‘speeding up’ to meet deadline.

What is worse though, is that now you have set the expectation that the team can deliver 40 units in the 15 day period, so your next schedule had 40 units factored in, and the next, and the next until ….. well, it’s like spending more on your credit card every month than you are paying off, at some point you can go no further .

The moral of all of this ?    Who knows… get a card with a long 0% balance transfer rate ??