On Wednesday 01 March 2006 03:27, Jeffrey Thalhammer wrote: > Thanks for this. I've heard the term "Technical Debt" > a few times lately and I really like it. Unlike a > financial debt however, there is a possibility that > the principal and interest won't have to be paid. A > poor implementation today may forfeit some feature in > the future, but there's always a chance that feature > won't be required[1]. In my case, I think we've bet > on this much too heavily. But I still like the idea > and will definitely refer people to that article. > > [1] I'm not sure if this is an argument for or against > iterative development. In some ways, paying down > technical debt seems antithetical to XP methodologies > (but that's a separate discussion).
I see XP as recommending that you understand and manage your technical debt. If your stakeholder knows (or at least is willing to take the risk) that the maintenance of your project over its lifecycle will be minimal, you can take on more technical debt than if your project were central to the business and would have years of heavy maintenance in the future. You can manage quality just as you manage scope, time, and resources. You just can't ignore it and expect to succeed on every project. -- c
