On "Evaluating Tech Debt"
A neat and very simple evaluation framework by riot
There are many different frameworks for evaluating tech debt, but one that I like in particular because of its simplicity is the one the team at Riot Games uses. In short, this framework consists of taking three metrics to evaluate a particular piece of tech debt:
- Impact — how much damage is the tech debt doing? Is it causing bugs, slowing your team down, hurting performance, or maybe a combination of all of those?
- Fix Cost — how much time and effort do you need to spend in order to pay this tech debt off, and what’s the opportunity cost? (i.e., what else could you be doing with your time instead of handling this piece of tech debt?)
- Contagion — how much will the tech debt spread if you don’t fix it as soon as possible?
This is a very simple way to look at it. It seems so obvious, yet I never thought about it. I’ll keep this around for the next evaluations.