Philippe Kruchten on Managing Technical Debt

In this episode, Sven Johann hosts Philippe Kruchten, the author of the Managing Technical Debt book. They talk about the research leading to the book and the practical implications the book and the research offer. They start the conversation with discussing terms: technical debt, interest, principal and then start with technical debt on the code level, e.g. code smells, tests and refactoring followed by static analysis and the prioritization of the findings. They then move to technical debt on the architectural level and go through the possibilities on estimating cost and value on those improvement and how to sell it to the business stakeholders. This is followed by explaining technical debt on the infrastructure level and how great code can become technical debt by time passing by (technological gap, software aging). After that the conversation moves towards solving the problem tactically and strategically.