Debt Management
Debt management is a software development methodology focused on identifying, tracking, and systematically reducing technical debt—the implied cost of additional rework caused by choosing quick, suboptimal solutions instead of better approaches that would take longer. It involves practices like code refactoring, documentation updates, and architectural improvements to maintain code quality and prevent future issues. This approach helps teams balance short-term delivery speed with long-term maintainability and sustainability of software projects.
Developers should learn and apply debt management when working on long-lived or complex projects where technical debt accumulates over time, leading to slower development, increased bugs, and higher maintenance costs. It is crucial in agile environments to prevent debt from hindering future iterations, and it's often used during code reviews, sprint planning, or dedicated 'debt reduction' sprints to ensure software remains scalable and efficient. Specific use cases include legacy system modernization, post-feature cleanup, and preparing for major releases.