Soft skills: tech debt
This course works through technical debt in one Ruby application and how to talk about it. It starts by building a register of eight items found with grep, rubocop, Brakeman and mutation runs, each backed by a command. Lessons then separate principal from interest, sort debt into four quadrants, and define a six-field register row kept in the repository. Later lessons cover describing consequences to people outside engineering, five ways to get time for the work, and one conversation that ties the steps together.
What you'll learn
- ✓Building a debt register from tool output, with evidence for each row
- ✓Separating principal from interest when pricing a debt
- ✓Classifying debt as deliberate or inadvertent, prudent or reckless
- ✓Writing rows with evidence, effect, effort, quadrant, trigger and decision
- ✓Describing consequences instead of causes to people outside engineering
- ✓Five ways to get time for debt work, and how to handle a no
The debt in this repository
A course about communicating technical debt is worthless without debt to communicate. So here is this application's, found by running the tools rather than by asking anyone's opinion.
Read the full lesson free →Curriculum
7 lessonsThe debt in this repository
A register of eight debt items that grep missed, each backed by evidence, three already fixed and five still open.
What debt actually costs
Principal is the work to fix a debt, interest is its ongoing cost, and how to quantify it honestly.
The four kinds of debt
Four quadrants of debt, deliberate or inadvertent and prudent or reckless, applied to this repository's eight items.
Writing it down
A six-field register row kept in the repository, its four failure modes, and the comment written at the shortcut.
Talking to people who are not engineers
Describing debt to non-engineers by its consequence, with examples for four audiences and for answering why it happened.
Getting the time
Five ways to get time for debt work, how to handle a no, and fixing broken instruments quietly.
Putting it together: one conversation
One worked example and one conversation that combine the earlier steps, plus the habits the course recommends.