Slide deck from my talk at the 4th International Workshop on Managing Technical Debt (MTD 2013), part of the 35th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2013). There is an accompanying paper in the conference proceedings. http://SystemAgility.com/ https://twitter.com/ken_power http://www.linkedin.com/in/kenpower

1. UNDERSTANDING THE IMPACT OF TECHNICAL
DEBT ON THE CAPACITYAND VELOCITY OF
TEAMS AND ORGANIZATIONS
Ken Power, Cisco Systems, Galway, Ireland
4th International Workshop on Managing Technical Debt (MTD 2013)

2. Options for Investing Capacity

3. Balanced InvestmentsInvestment(of(Team(Capacity(
Technical)Debt)
Quality)Debt)
Features)
Spike)Tests)
Research)
Planning)

4. Unbalanced InvestmentsInvestment(of(Team(Capacity(
Technical)Debt)
Quality)Debt)
Features)
Spike)Tests)
Research)
Planning)

5. Planned v Unplanned Technical Debt

6. Insufficient Investment in Debt Reduction
40%$
17%$
5%$
38%$
Combined)Feature)Team)Sprint)8)Capacity)
Alloca7on)
Features$$
Performance/$
Robustness$
Technical$Debt$
Defects$

7. Mounting Debt Impacts Velocity

8. When Failure Demand Dominates
Throughput
Failure Demand
Value Demand

9. Planned v Actual Debt Reduction

10. Technical Debt Impacts Organization
Capacity
Business
Unit
Product
Team Team
Product
Team Team Team

11. Conclusions
• Visualize Technical Debt
• Articulate debt reduction strategies
• Consider each strategy as an option
• Quantify the impact and benefit of each option
• Understand the effect on team, product and organization
velocity
• Understand the effect on team, product and organization
capacity

12. Thank You!
• My day job
• Co-Founder, Agile Office at Cisco
• Internal Agile & Lean Consultant
• Extra-curricular activities
• Fellow of the Lean Systems Society (http://LeanSystemsSociety.org/)
• Award-winning publications in Agile and Lean product development
• Frequent speaker at major international Agile and Lean conferences
• Involved in organizing international Agile and Lean conferences
• Industry/academic collaborative research on Agile and Lean software development
• Lean Startup Mentor
• Find me online
• Blog: http://SystemAgility.com/
• Twitter: @ken_power
• LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/kenpower