The article 'How to Manage Technical Debt: The DevOps Approach' by Julia Teryokhina, a Senior Presales Engineering Manager at Timspark, delves into the concept of technical debt, its causes, measurement techniques, and strategies for reduction, particularly emphasizing the role of DevOps practices.
Julia defines technical debt as postponed changes in code and software architecture, which may lead to increased maintenance costs and software instability over time. The main reasons for technical debt occurrence include prioritizing speed to market over quality, lack of coding standards adherence, and environmental changes.
To measure technical debt, Julia suggests using SQALE methodology, which rates code quality on an alphabetical scale, and recommends prioritizing issues based on their impact on application stability. Moreover, it emphasizes the importance of addressing security concerns promptly, referencing the OWASP Top 10 as a standard guideline for security risks.
In dealing with technical debt, the article advocates for implementing coding standards, adopting suitable development methodologies, and automating processes. It also suggests involving DevOps in setting up Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) pipelines, monitoring for updates and vulnerabilities, and advising on architectural decisions.
Julia also highlights static code analysis tools like SonarQube and CAST Imaging as effective means to reduce technical debt by identifying design errors, code smells, and security vulnerabilities. It provides a comparison between the two tools based on various criteria such as price, speed of analysis, and integration capabilities.
Furthermore, the article discusses how reducing technical debt positively impacts the QA team by decreasing maintenance costs and workload, particularly through improved testability and code coverage. It also addresses scenarios where ignoring technical debt might be acceptable, such as during Proof of Concept (PoC) development or when time to market is critical.
Read more about the importance of managing technical debt throughout the software development lifecycle, whether dealing with legacy software or starting new projects.