JAXenter: What is technical debt?

Antonio Cobo: Technical debt is a concept in software development which reflect the implied cost of additional rework by choosing an easy and quick solution instead of a better approach that would take longer.

JAXenter: What kind of obstacles do organizations have that keep them from fixing this kind of problem?

Antonio Cobo: If you keep choosing the easy and fast way you will end up locked with a code base hard to manage and your software won’t be able to keep up with your competitors. Also, a code base full of technical debt will make your best developers to go away.

JAXenter: How does technical debt grow “interest”?

Antonio Cobo: In order to be able to deliver value on a fit for purpose basis, we need to have a clean code. Generating technical debt will slow down your business and reduce your revenue due to its maintenance cost.

JAXenter: Why do developers and sponsors have such a different understanding of technical debt?

Antonio Cobo: The points of view of each aren’t usually aligned. We need to be able to communicate impact on brand image and impact on revenue to the sponsors, reducing the technical jargon to avoid scaring or boring the sponsors.

JAXenter:  Can you tell us about a time when you learned from your failures with your technical debt?

Antonio Cobo: On my early days working as a developer, we had to dedicate half of a month to deal with a code introduced earlier that year. That code was done like that cause “we couldn’t afford to spend one day more on it” …

JAXenter: What will participants be able to take away from your talk?

Antonio Cobo: With the examples of successes and failures with technical debt, I hope the participants will be able to communicate better with the rest of the team and sponsors regarding technical debt. I’ll share some ideas to manage the technical debt in the backlog as well, which can be useful for the participants or (even better) those ideas might get the participants to think new ways to manage their backlogs.

Thank you very much!