I've been talking with a very sharp leader about how that person uses the ideas of risk and technical debt. I'm paraphrasing, but the leader said something like this: “We realize we need to incur some technical debt. So we explain that we choose to include the debt as part of our risk mitigation.
That's a bottom-up description of what I suspect occurs every day when people and teams take on technical debt. We realize we can mitigate a risk by taking on technical debt. Then we present that mitigation as a way to manage risks.
Instead, I like to think about risk management first. When we start with the various risks, and use the Rule of Three to create options and alternatives, we might not need to take on technical debt.
I'm using technical debt in the sense that we know we need to do more. But for time or other reasons, we choose to take a shortcut. We realize the mortgage payment might balloon for that debt. But given our current state of risk, we choose the option of debt. (See Technical Debt, Loans & Costs.)
If we don't start with risks and we don't create more options, we might take on debt we don't need to.
If you, too, are trying to manage risks by taking on technical debt, ask these questions in this order:
- What risks do I see?
- How many options can I create for mitigating those risks?
- What are the current benefits and foreseeable costs (the debt ideas) for choosing one of those options?
We can't always avoid technical debt, but we often have more options than we first explore. It's worthwhile considering those other options to manage risk.