28. Technical debt and how to handle it
You most probably know how credit cards work. You take out a loan from a bank for whatever reason and you are given a grace period of a month or two to pay back the money you owe. If you fail to pay back within the grace period, you will be charged interest, which increases like a snowball as it is rolled on.
It’s the same with technical debt. You’re rushing to release new product features, while taking out a loan from your “future self”. It’s OK at the beginning, but after a while, it starts bothering you. Eventually, it accumulates to the point where it leads to bankruptcy. To know how to deal with it, you need to understand the basics of loans.
- Evaluate the loan amount. This is the most difficult part. I’ll talk about it in my next Tale.
- Put together a payment schedule. Payments need to be regular and equal.
- If the payment is overdue, have a serious conversation about it with your team. Just like banks do.
- If your team misses the payment deadline several times in a row, call debt collectors. In our case, this means arranging for external team management.
And remember that loans are easy to take out, but not so easy to pay back.
Tales of a Product Owner: concentrated wisdom about project management, team creation and UX.
