Kooperativer Bibliotheksverbund

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Format: 1 online resource (375 pages)

Edition: 1st ed.

ISBN: 9798868802645

Content: Technical debt is an often-overlooked problem that the software industry needs to take more seriously. All organizations are impacted by it, most wish that they had less of it, but need help in understanding the nature of the beast. This book aims to clear up any misconceptions and show you how to implement a sound technical debt management program to suit your company's needs. You'll learn the greatest challenge in solving the technical debt dilemma is not to find solutions to it, but rather to find solutions to the human and organizational issues that lead to that debt. For example, convincing senior stakeholders of the importance of addressing technical debt, getting stakeholders to acknowledge how their actions lead to unintentional debt, and enabling teams to prioritize technical debt over short-term goals. Therefore, this book is divided into three parts: defining technical debt, understanding technical debt, and tackling technical debt. It begins by explaining why technical debt should not be considered a technical problem, but rather a problem of how trade-off decisions are made. You'll then examine how making decisions using the affect heuristic, more commonly known as a "gut feeling," can lead to unnecessary technical debt, followed by some techniques for combating your vulnerability to this trap. Reducing your organization's level of technical debt is not easy. Taming Your Dragon will show you how to implement a technical debt management program. What You Will Learn Review a new paradigm based on technical debt being a combination of trade-off problems and system problems Understand the many ways that technical debt adversely affects an organization's ability to deliver IT change Create an effective process for addressing technical debt See why analogies are important Who This Book Is For Software teams supporting DevOps, managers, and other business stakeholders looking to implement a technical debt management program.

Note: Description based upon print version of record. , Appeal to Emotions Through a Story , Intro -- Table of Contents -- About the Author -- Foreword by Dorothy Graham -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Part I: Exploring Technical Debt -- Chapter 1: What Is Technical Debt? -- Defining Technical Debt -- Technical Debt Is Not a Technical Problem -- Technical Debt Is a Trade-Off Problem -- Technical Debt Is Also a Systems Problem -- Technical Debt Is an Economic Problem -- Technical Debt Is a Wicked Problem -- Technical Debt Is a Broken Analogy -- The Technical Debt Onion Model -- Technical Layer -- Trade-Off Layer -- Systems Layer -- Economics/Games Theory Layer -- Wicked Problems Layer -- Is All Technical Debt the Same? -- The Technical Debt Quadrant -- Interest Rate -- Level: Architecture/Code/Other -- Where in the SDLC Was the Debt Created? -- What Was the Debt a Trade-Off for? -- Further Reading -- Summary -- Chapter 2: Why You Need to Address Technical Debt -- Is Technical Debt Really a Problem? -- How NASA Engineers Designed the Space Shuttle -- How Technical Debt Killed Netscape Navigator -- A Tale of Technical Debt at HMV -- Additional Cost to Every Software Project -- Slows Down Tempo and Delivery -- Technical Debt Makes Project Delivery Less Predictable -- Estimations, Schedules, and Projections Become Unrealistic -- Technical Debt Can Even Prevent a Project Occurring -- A Spiral Into Debt: Self-Reinforcing Loops -- Further Reading -- Summary -- Chapter 3: Why Has Technical Debt Proved So Resistant to Solutions? -- Technical Debt Is Misunderstood -- We Deal with Technical Debt at the Wrong Place -- Proximate Causes and Ultimate Causes -- Technical Debt Is Rarely Urgent -- Technical Debt Is Not Sexy -- There Are No Silver Bullets for Technical Debt -- We Desperately Want Technical Debt to Be a Technical Problem -- Reducing Technical Debt Requires Change Management -- Further Reading -- Summary. , Part II: Understanding the Technical Debt Problem -- Chapter 4: The Broken Analogy -- Johannes Had a Problem -- Why We Use Analogies -- The Power of a Good Analogy -- Characteristics of a Good Analogy -- Analogy Familiarity/Accuracy Quadrant -- Analogy Suitability Analysis Tool -- Ways That Analogies Go Wrong -- Rethinking Our Technical Debt Analogy -- Alternative Analogies -- The Obesity Problem -- Effect of Obesity on an Individual -- Obesity Has Been Profoundly Misunderstood -- Other Lessons from the Obesity Analogy -- Environmental Pollution -- Addiction -- Friction -- Other Analogies -- Analogy Quadrant Analysis -- Analogy Suitability Analysis Tool -- Further Reading -- Summary -- Chapter 5: Technical Debt As a  Trade-Off Problem -- The Origin of Our Decision-Making Capability -- Conditions of Our Ancestral Past -- Decision-Making Occurs in Our Subconscious -- The Affect Heuristic -- When Heuristics Fail -- The Technical Debt Trade-Off Decision -- Why Smoking Prevention Programs Initially Failed and then Succeeded -- Appeal to Emotions Through a Story -- Precision and Valence -- Precision, Valence, and the Challenger Launch Decision -- Ulysses Contracts -- Simultaneous Versus Sequential Decisions -- Other Factors That Influence Decisions -- Overdue Projects and Crazy Risk-Taking -- Effect of Time Constraints -- Hyperbolic Discounting -- Further Reading -- Summary -- Chapter 6: Technical Debt As a Systems Problem -- The Unhappy CTO -- What Is a System? -- The Organization As a System -- Crucial Difference Between IT Systems and Social Systems -- Conflict Between the Placenta and Y Chromosome -- Introducing Change: The Prohibition Problem -- Basics of Systems Dynamics -- Stocks and Flows -- Variables and Causal Links -- Feedback Loop -- Common Dynamic System Behaviors -- Exponential Growth -- Balancing Behavior -- Growth, then Leveling Off. , Overshoot and Collapse -- Systems, Individuals, and Technical Debt -- Individuals Constrained by Role -- What the Hell Is Water? -- Fundamental Attribution Error -- Consequences of Individuals Constrained by Role -- Overdue Projects and Schedule Recovery -- Project Underestimation -- Overshoot and Collapse -- Policy Resistance -- Further Reading -- Summary -- Chapter 7: Technical Debt As an  Economics Problem -- Benefits of an Economics Point of View -- Principal-Agent Problem -- Potential Solutions -- Project Phases When the Principal-Agent Problem Leads to Technical Debt -- Requirements and Design -- Potential Solutions -- Overdue and Behind Schedule Projects -- Potential Solutions -- The Tragedy of the Commons -- Potential Solutions -- Externalities -- "That's Not My Problem!" -- Externalities Driven by Organizational Structure -- Can Externalities Be Good? The Coase Theorem -- Potential Solutions -- Short-Termism -- Short-Termism in Nature -- Short-Termism and Technical Debt -- Potential Solutions -- The Tyranny of Small Decisions -- Potential Solutions -- Creeping Normality -- Potential Solutions -- Price of Anarchy -- Potential Solutions -- Moral Hazard -- A Technical Debt Register Increases Technical Debt -- Potential Solutions -- Additional Things You Can Do -- Further Reading -- Summary -- Chapter 8: Technical Debt As a Wicked Problem -- Wanted: One-Handed Economist! -- "It's Always a People Problem" -- Why Study Wicked Problems? -- Example Wicked Problems -- Wicked and Tame Problems -- Characteristics of a Wicked Problem -- 1. You Cannot Understand the Problem Until After You Have Found a Solution -- 2. Stakeholders Have Radically Different Worldviews -- 3. How You Understand the Problem Determines What Solution You Try -- 4. Solutions Are Not True or False, but Better or Worse -- 5. You Do Not Have a Test of Your Solution. , 6. Every Solution Is a "One-Shot Attempt" -- 7. Wicked Problems Are Interconnected with Other Wicked Problems -- 8. You Have No Way of Knowing When to Stop -- Social Complexity and Fragmentation -- Dichotomy of Design -- Trade-Offs, Systems, Economics, and Wicked Problems -- Addressing Technical Debt As a Wicked Problem -- Further Reading -- Summary -- Chapter 9: Common Technical Debt Anti-patterns -- There's a Hole in My Bucket! -- How Exploring Anti-patterns Helps Us -- Causal Loop Diagrams -- List of Anti-patterns -- Estimation Trap -- From Project Overrun to a Short-Term Focus -- From Short-Term Focus to Technical Debt Levels -- From Level of Technical Debt to Estimation Errors -- Estimation Errors: A Complete Picture -- Last Race of the Day -- Moral Credential Effect -- Broken Windows Theory and Learned Helplessness -- Goal Culture -- Social Loafing -- OKRs and the Surrogation Effect -- PS General Slocum -- OKRs and the Social Contract -- Descent into Firefighting -- Limited Environments -- Prototype into Debt -- Further Reading -- Summary -- Chapter 10: Modeling Technical Debt with System Modeling Tools -- What You Gain from Dynamic Models -- Modeling Tools -- Getting Started -- Software Projects -- Main Workflow -- Modeling Technical Debt Creation -- Workforce View -- Quality and Productivity View -- Dashboard View -- Run a Simulation -- Findings from the Model -- Why the Project Was Underestimated -- Effect of Technical Debt on Current Project -- Effect of Technical Debt on Subsequent Projects -- Friction -- Implications for Projects -- Social Loafing -- Considerations when Developing a Simulation Model -- Further Reading -- Resources -- Summary -- Part III: Tackling Technical Debt -- Chapter 11: Safely Convincing Everyone -- Dr Semmelweis -- Lessons from Dr Semmelweis -- The True Lesson from Dr Semmelweis. , What Could Dr Semmelweis Have Done Differently? -- Avoid Alienating Colleagues -- Better Communications -- Recognize the Sensitivity of Gentlemen Doctors -- Build a Coalition of Supporters -- Wait for an Opportune Moment -- Engage a Different Community -- First Seek to Understand, Then to Be Understood -- The Problem of Externalities -- It's a People Problem: Involve Everybody -- Begin by Understanding One Person at a Time -- Develop a Shared Commitment Among Stakeholders -- What If Your Organization Won't Change? -- Safely Convincing Everyone Checklist -- Further Reading -- Summary -- Chapter 12: A Program to Address Technical Debt -- Technical Debt Reduction Program Framework -- Preliminary Information Gathering -- Workshops for Problem Understanding -- Additional Information Gathering -- Workshops for Solution Development -- Pilot Solutions -- Rollout and Stabilization -- A More Complete Framework -- Summary -- Chapter 13: Preliminary Information Gathering -- The Corporate Marshmallow Test -- Understand Where You Are Now -- How Much Technical Debt Do We Have? -- How and Why Did We Acquire It? -- Where Is Your Organization Feeling Pain? -- What Code-Related Technical Debt Is Out There? -- What Architecture-Related Technical Debt Is There? -- Are We Firefighting Our Way into Debt? -- Inadvertent Descent into Firefighting -- Questionnaires for Anti-patterns -- Determine How to Go Forward -- Understand Your Trade-Offs -- Understand Your System -- Understand Your Potential Leverage Points -- Prepare Individuals for Change -- Software Simulation Models -- Further Reading -- Resources -- Summary -- Chapter 14: Workshop for Problem Understanding -- Agenda -- PowerPoint Slide Deck -- Workshop Details -- Introduction -- Understanding Trade-Off Decisions -- Understanding Systems Effects -- Anti-patterns -- Technical Debt from an Economics PoV. , Wicked Problems, Social Complexity, and Fragmentation.

Additional Edition: ISBN 9798868802638

Language: English