Technical debt assessments often follow a similar pattern across engagements. In contrast, technical debt reduction initiatives can vary significantly from one company to another. In addition to exposing unexpected technical challenges, the technical debt reduction initiative brings business issues, organizational considerations and methodical questions to the fore. Moreover, when a technical debt reduction initiative is expanded from reduction to prevention of downstream effects, performance measures, governance issues and cultural aspects need to be addressed. Unless all these issues are addressed in a holistic manner, their combined effect will likely stall the technical debt initiative, frustrating the efforts to wrestle technical debt to the ground at the enterprise level.
The Cutter Technical Debt Framework enables an organization to move onward and upward from assessing technical debt to reducing it and preventing its propagation. The framework ties the measurement of technical debt to the fabric of the software process at six levels:
- Technical Practices
- Iteration Management
- Project Management
- Release Management
- Product Planning
- Portfolio Governance
By so doing, the framework ensures sustainability of the technical debt initiative.
In this on-demand webinar, Dr. Israel Gat presents the Cutter Technical Debt Framework. He describes the experience and insights gained by applying the framework in various Cutter client engagements. Dr. Gat puts special emphasis on critical success factors for making the technical debt initiative work for you, your company, its partners and its customers.