This is a presentation that covers origins of technical and product debt, how to deal with it and how to "sell it" debt mitigation and debt management

1. Technical & Product
Debt Management
By Dr. Sergey Sundukovskiy

2. Introduction
Sergey
Sundukovskiy,
Ph.D.
Head of Engineering - Technology
Innovation at Capital One
Current: Capital One, Google, 500 Startups
Previous: Launchpad LA, PushPoint, LivnGiv

3. “… A design or construction approach that is expedient in the short
term but that creates a technical context in which the same work will
cost more to do later than it would cost to do now (including
increased cost over time).”
3
Debt

4. Everything You Want to Do “Later” Is DEBT
• Let’s Document Later
• Let’s Test Later
• Let’s Architect Later
• Let’s Refactor Later
4
Debt

5. Technical Debt Results
Product
Debt
Things SLOW DOWN

6. • All Debt Is Bad
• No Debt Is Great
• Taking On Debt Always Gets You There Faster
6
Debt Misconceptions

7. Technical Debt Story
I Have Not Seen Organs Like These

8. CEOs Tale
• We were very productive
• We kicked ass
• We became complacent
• I fired them all
• I hired a new team
• They are not productive either
• Must have chosen wrong
• I fired them all
• SAVE ME
8
Common Story

9. CTOs Tale
• We were very productive through debt accumulation
• We kicked ass but burned out
• We slowed down due to increasing debt support
• We got fired
• New team got hired
• It does not know where skeletons are buried
• We got fired as well
• I have Not Seen Organs Like These
9
Common Story

10. Support Cost is a Euphemism for Debt
Support
(15%)
Innovation
(85%)
Support
(50%)
Innovation
(50%)
Support
(85%)
Innovation
(15%)
Year 1
Year 2
Year 3
Support to Innovation Ratio

11. Leveraging Debt
Continued

12. • Time to Market – If taking on debt gets you to market disproportionately
faster
• Time to Contact – If strategic contract is at stake debt might be worth it
• Time to Funding – If funding is at stake debt might be worth it
• Time to Survival – Debt is irrelevant if there is no tomorrow
Leveraging Debt

13. • Non-Leveragable Debt
• Debt Due to Ignorance
• Debt Due to Laziness
Unacceptable Debt

14. Technical Debt Survey

15. Technical Debt Elements
• Lack of Architectural Blueprint
• Lack of Unit Testing
• Lack of Integration Testing
• Lack of Code Reviews
• Lack of Starter Platform
• Lack of Starter Framework
• Lack of Technical Design
• Lack of Development Recipes

16. How Did We Let It Happen?
One Logical Step at a Time

17. Broken Window Theory
One Broken Window Leads to Ruin

18. Broken Window Theory
Do Sweat the Small Stuff
Small Vandalism
Urban Decay
CRIME

19. Debt Tipping Point
Product Death
Year 2
Year 1
Tipping Point

20. Debt Creeps Up on You
Yup, It is Kind of Like That
No Turning Back Now!
The Snowball Effect
SPLAT!

21. Debt Management
Regular, Slow and Steady Does It

22. Technical Debt Management
Technology Debt Management and Debt Avoidance
• Build on Top of IaaS/PaaS
• Build on Top of Starter Product/Starter Framework
• Implement Unit/Integration/Functional Testing
• Conduct Code Review
• Implement CI/CD/CD
• Establish Short Sprints (Agile) or No Sprints (Kanban)
• Non-Monolithic Design

23. Product Debt
Yup, That’s Feature Creep

24. Featuritis Curve
Number of Features
UserHappiness
Happy User Peak
“I rule!”
“Cool!”
“I’m so glad they added
this.”
“Nice, but I wish I
could do more…”
“Guess I better look
at the manual…”
“Hey, where the f***
did they put that?!”
“Now I can’t even do the ONE
SIMPLE THING I bought this
for…”
“I suck!”

25. Features Usage

26. What is Product Debt?
Product Debt = Product Complexity =
User Confusion

27. Multiplicative Complexity
N(N-1)/2 – Undirected Graph
N(N-1) – Directed Graph

28. Ease of Use
Main Feature = Easy to Use

29. Irreducible Complexity
Simplest Mousetrap

30. Product Feature Attributes
Intelligent Design and Evolutionary Concepts
• Aim For Adjacent Possible
Irreducible Complexity
• Can’t Take Anything Away
• Can’t Be Simpler
Simplest for What It Does
• Simple Path to Intent

31. 31
Path to Intent
Straightforward Path to Intent

32. Feature Payments
Feature Currency
• Confusion “Payment” for Features
What Do They Mean?
• “This Is Confusing”
Ideal Feature
• Minimal Confusion
• Minimal Multiplicative Complexity

33. 33
Features
Confusion
Ideal Balance
Realistic Balance
Feature Payments

34. • Do Not Complicate Things
• Do Not Make Users Think
• Do Not Make Users Work
• Do Not Defy User’s Expectations
• Do Not Confuse Yourself With Users
• Do Not Assume You Know Everything
34
Product Debt Don’ts

35. 35
Always Be Testing

36. 36
Painted Door
Painted Door vs. Real Door

37. Product Debt Management and Debt Avoidance
• 30% of the Sprint Should Be Devoted to Feature Removal
• Test Before You Implement
• Collect User Feedback
• Measure and Correlate Churn
• Assess Complexity and Confusion
37
Product Debt Management

38. Not The Same Thing
Management
Mitigation

39. 39
Selling Debt Mitigation

40. Debt Mitigation Is Very Hard To Sell
• Cause and effect is not immediately apparent
• ROI is very difficult to quantify
• Definition of done is hard to come up with
• Perpetual projects are not crowd pleasers
• Users are not even aware that backend of apps even
exists. UX/UI in user’s mind is the app itself
40
Debt Mitigation Advice

41. If You Can Help It, Do Not Sell It
• Schedule feature holidays (every 5th release)
• Refactor as you go
• Make debt mitigation as part of the process
• Give estimates considering debt mitigation
• Invite outside experts
If You Must Sell It
• Tell CEO/CTO story
• Use aircraft maintenance strategy
41
Debt Mitigation Advice
Continued