Abstract: Ward Cunningham introduced the metaphor of technical debt 25 years ago. And yet, 25 years later, many organizations continue to build technical debt more quickly than ever. Why is that? How can we shift the technical conversation to better outcomes for our organizations? And how can we help them see technical health as an enabler for long-term success?
In this session we will explore technical debt and technical health through the lens of real-life stories from participants.
We will start by eliciting technical debt stories from you and other participants. What happened? What impact did technical debt play in the outcomes your organization wanted? Did the notion of technical debt trigger different conversations or actions? What obstacles did you face? How did you overcome them? What challenges remain?
We will then shift the focus to technical health. We will elicit similar stories centred instead on enabling value delivery through technical health. Did the concept of technical health, rather than technical debt, make a difference? In what way? What different outcomes emerged? What insights did you or your organization gain?
We will then dig into systemic forces in our organizations that lead to technical debt. In the stories captured what systemic forces were at play? Was the skill or craftsmanship of the team important? Were there external factors external such as budgeting or hiring policies that had a large impact? How did these factors play out over time? How were you able to dial up the positive factors and deal with the negative ones?
By the end, we plan to have annotated the original stories into a wider view of how technical debt and technical health can impact our organizations. We hope participants will gain deeper insights into how to align technical health with the overall organizational goals to gain more positive outcomes.
Learning Outcomes:
