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Understanding and Eliminating Technical Debt

by Mark Heath

In this course we explore what technical debt is, the problems it causes, and how you can identify and quantify it. We then address how to create an action plan to address it, and look at some practical techniques for repaying it.

What you'll learn

If you are working on a large and successful commercial project, technical debt can gradually accumulate as you take the decision to do things the quick way rather than the right way. If care isn't taken, technical debt can threaten the long-term success of your project. In this course we take a broad look at the wide variety of forms that technical debt can appear in, and look at how you can identify it and quantify it with metrics. We also look at the challenges associated with repaying it, including getting the rest of the development team and your managers to view it as a priority. We conclude the course with advice about techniques and action plans for repaying the debt.

Table of contents

About the author

Mark Heath is a software developer based in Southampton, England, working for NICE Systems as a software architect creating cloud based digital evidence management systems for the police. He is the creator of NAudio, an open source audio framework for .NET. He is passionate about continually improving his skills and training other developers, and in recent years has been particularly focused on the challenges of creating scalable and reliable Azure-deployed systems. In his (very limited) spare t... more

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