DEV Community: Artem

How to measure technical debt?

Artem — Fri, 11 Jun 2021 05:32:24 +0000

If you had any experience in IT, you have probably heard of technical debt but when Product Management is something you are unfamiliar with, there’s a significant quantity of new things for you, especially if you’ve never been engaged with the IT industry.

If you’ve been closely linked with software development, you’re surely aware of this subject. But if you’ve come from a sales department or any other non-tech department, you might be confused.

I assume that this is the main reason why you have found this article! So let us dive you into the world of Technical Debt.

How can technical debt be defined? ‘Technical debt’(also known as tech debt or code debt) shows what happens when software engineering teams rely on straightforward solutions that can help to reach fast project delivery in the short-term; nevertheless, in the long-term, these approaches do not represent the best possible solution––thus causing technical debt.

Basically, Technical Debt is the expenses obtained by the Company because the software developers decided to build a software by choosing the shortcut, taking a simpler and faster way for on-time delivery rather than a detailed, advanced, and an excellent one. The Company incurs this cost at a later stage once the software has been developed. Therefore, it is a debt for the Company, which can be accounted for beforehand. It pays later debt that a Company has to pay in the long term to comply with the actual business requirements.

Now that you are familiar with the term Technical Debt, how can you measure it?
I’m sure you know the widespread quote: “You can’t fix it if you can’t measure it.” Before we pay Technical Debt, we need first to measure the present status of tasks. It is almost impossible for software engineers to measure technical debt manually. Acting this way will require us diving into the codebase and detecting all possible bugs, and, after all, estimating every possible issue gradually. This is inefficient and impossible at the same time to figure each evolving problem. valid

Track your tech debt
One of the most important things for developers is to track the tech debt initially with a valid approach and not take it casually. If it’s not attended on schedule, it might cause huge losses for the Company at a later stage. Various tools are available on the market that may be applied to evaluate T.D.. Using them can help companies to manage the debt with other existing debts. This way, you can establish the priority of T.D. and work in a well-functioned way.

Types of technical debt
Now that we have understood the term "Technical debt," let us know more about its various types.

Known debt:
Sometimes, developers are well aware that they will incur technical debt later. This won't be a surprising claim for them since it was anticipated and designed in advance to meet fast delivery timelines. This is not necessarily bad debt, though, until it is adequately monitored and controlled.
Unknown debt:
While the product is developed, it might happen that it was built efficiently, but due to some bugs and errors in the code, technical debt occurs. This wasn't known at the time the product was created. Therefore it is unknown debt since it wasn't anticipated before.
Inevitable debt:
There are various challenges that a developer undertakes while delivering a project as expected. However, code could become outdated, or third-party systems are used, and such systems crash or are not upgraded on time. These factors lead to technical debt, which is inevitable so that the elements are not in control of developers.

Following are the simple steps that we can use to measure Technical Debt
Number 1 - Measure Technical-Debt Ratio (“TDR”)
There are various available tools to evaluate the ratio of technical debt such as duecode.io, JShint, CodeClimate, and Checkstyle can be very helpful in calculating technical debt and figuring out your technical debt ratio.

TDR is the proportion between the price you pay to adjust your software vs. the price you pay assemble a new one, and can be defined by the formula:

Technical Debt Ratio = (Remediation Cost / Development Cost) x 100%

TDR is essential because it shows you the time you have to spend to transform spaghetti code into well-written code.

Number 2 - Determine when it should be paid
The company’s management and technical leaders should define a suitable grade for when to pay the technical debt. Every business follows an acceptable grade of debt according to its business accounting. Technical Debt has to be evaluated to define the appropriate payback time.

Number 3 - Prioritize your debt
It is crucial to understand which debt is most essential to eliminate first in terms of what will increase efficiency and raise the quality of code. The focus should be on the top priority elements by exploiting the opportunities as for the previous steps.

Technical Debt. Real Life Example
In duecode, we use metrics like Technical Debt and Technical Debt per Line of Code.

Technical Debt. An effort that is necessary to fix all code issues.
Measured in minutes, hours, and days (1 day = 8 hours).

Technical Debt per Line of Code. The number of the technical Debt attributed to the code normalized to the number of Lines of Code. The lower value is better. A positive dynamic is for the value to decline over time. Technical Debt is the burden of technical imperfection found in the code. It's the main value to compare developers and projects.

Sign in to your duecode account and go to Commits. Here you will find these metrics, and you can analyze every single commit.

To find all violations that are causing Technical Debt, go to the Violations page.

Don't have a duecode account? Sign up now and give it a try. It's free.

In Summary
It is quite usual and expected for most IT businesses to have Technical Debt. Measuring and monitoring technical debt may appear to be burdensome, but if you leave it unattended and untracked, it is going to constantly influence the quality of your product. Therefore, it is necessary to give technical debt transparency and measurability so that both business and software engineers can work proactively and keep it under control.

Remember, keeping Technical Debt overlooked will cost more money than reducing it.

What is technical debt in Sonarqube?

Artem — Tue, 08 Jun 2021 05:04:59 +0000

Technical debt is perhaps one of the most important considerations to keep in mind when you’re handling complex software projects. Also called design debt or code debt, it is a very commonly used metric that makes tracking and maintaining code quality a lot easier for development teams.

Being one of the most popular tools for code quality maintenance, SonarQube from SonarSource comes with powerful technical debt analyzing tools baked in and ready to use out of the box. In this article, we will look over what technical debt is in SonarQube and how we can measure and reduce it appropriately.
Read more: https://duecode.io/blog/what-is-technical-debt-in-sonarqube/

Jira Capacity Planning

Artem — Thu, 03 Jun 2021 06:23:28 +0000

Complete Guide on How to Do Planning and Estimation Like a Pro
For the whole iteration, it's important to make it possible that your team members have been scheduled to utilize their full capacity on the project.
Being on schedule is the only good news you long for during a sprint. If you are taking care of a software development team, you need to make sure that the iterations are meeting scheduled delivery times while your team members utilize their capacities fully. Planning their capacities may not be a one-time process; rather, it's an ongoing process and is worth spending hours on it along with the finances.

Software teams today are successfully employing Jira Capacity Planning to keep track of their performance throughout the development process. Jira Capacity Planning helps in all three stages of coding, collaboration, and release in the software development process. Easy-to-use agile roadmaps for Jira tools help the teams to manage the stakeholders, budgets, and feature requirements and make the findings as transparent as possible.

Through this article, you will realize how important capacity planning is for any project and how you can successfully employ Jira capacity planning on a portfolio individual basis for your team for the entire life of your software project.
LEARN MORE: https://duecode.io/blog/jira-capacity-planning/

How can you improve your code quality?

Artem — Fri, 07 May 2021 05:38:19 +0000

When producing good software, the quality of code exhibited during the process of coding plays a huge role in determining the end product. Sole developers, teams, and managers who are hired are expected to keep up certain simple disciplines and use dedicated tools where suitable to improve their code quality.

In this article, we are going to look at a few points a developer or one in charge of managing the end product would put into consideration to ensure good code quality.

First, we start by defining what good quality code is. If it can be read and understood at once, has minimal bugs, follows standard code rules, and successfully does what it has been built to do, then that code is of good quality.

Things like code reviews, tools, testing, management, code styles, and standards, among others, make the foundation for a developer to count on if he/she is thinking of an excellent product. For example, a software engineer manager (the management) responsible for checking the code quality could come up with organizational systematic measures to encourage the developers to maintain quality code.

Learn more: https://duecode.io/blog/how-can-i-improve-my-code-quality/

How To Measure Code Quality ?

Artem — Thu, 06 May 2021 07:21:40 +0000

Software Engineers are in great demand nowadays. Their unique skill sets make them different from the other available professions.

We can never ignore the role of digitalization in our everyday life. Be it Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, or Twitter, all of them are being managed by thousands of Software Engineers.

In short, every application that we use, are being handled by the Software Developers. Basically, all these applications are programmed in some language.

It might be C++, Python, Java, or Javascript, to name a few. The codebases of these applications can run into some millions of lines of code- yes millions of lines. To give you an idea, it is being said that Facebook runs on 62 million lines of code.

That is too when we don’t include the backend component. Maintaining such a huge codebase in itself is such a daunting task.

Obviously, there are different teams like the Development Team, Testing Team, QA Team, SRE Team to handle the different kinds of situations. But a thing that remains common in them is that all of them ultimately work and debug the code.

It is therefore very clear that there must be certain standards that must be followed by the developers while writing the code. Now, these standards can vary from one company to another or from one team to the other.

What is Technical Debt in Scrum ?

Artem — Wed, 05 May 2021 04:32:01 +0000

More or less, it requires a Scrum Master to cultivate a climate where a client places an order for the work into the product backlog, and the team of the Scrum transforms it into an increment of significant worth.

Software developers using agile strategies to code often prefer to use Scrum strategies to build extremely complex software products. Dealing with technical debt in Scrum is a challenge that all coding technicians face during the Sprint.
Scrum is getting popular with every single passing day as the most widely used agile coding technique. It is a combination of practices, standards, and coding conventions in iterative procedures to produce the best coding results in a sprint. But the question is still there.

How can such an exuberant process result in the instance of creating technical debt? To answer this question, first, find out how Scrum works?

How Scrum works in Agile network
Think of Scrum as a simpler structure that delivers the best results. It helps individuals, groups as well as associations in providing versatile answers for really complex coding tasks. It makes it possible to convey beneficial and innovative results that worth beyond expectations. More or less, it requires a Scrum Master to cultivate a climate where a client places an order for the work into the product backlog, and the team of the Scrum transforms it into an increment of significant worth.

Sprint is the decided timeframe to finish the project that is allocated to the Scum team as well as prepare its review. It starts with arranging a joint meeting that includes team members, facilitators, and the owners of a project along with the Scrum Master. They together concur upon precisely what work will be refined during the Sprint. They decide how much work can reasonably be refined during the Sprint, while the owner of the project has the last say on what standards should be met for the work to be endorsed and acknowledged.

The scum works in repeated splints that progressively reach towards the completion of the project. Each splint completes the output from a specific backlog provided by the client.

Usually, a sprint endures a week or 30 days. The length of a sprint is jointly decided by the scrum master and the client or owner of the project. When the group agrees on how long a sprint should last, all future sprints ought to be something similar.

Technical Debt in Scrum
Scrum engages software makers in the form of a team. The whole team focuses on a single goal of making a final product that is all set to be promoted or delivered to the end-user or owner. The individual team members work closely, discus, and interact to get the best possible solution, following the instructions from the scrum master in the form of scrum rules. The scrum master makes sure that the backlog provided by the owner or customer is best utilized in a coordinated manner by the team.

Technical Debt In Scrum
Who is responsible for managing the Technical Debt in Scrum?
Not only the Scrum Master but the whole team is responsible for managing the technical debt in the whole development project. The Scrum Master makes it feasible for the group members to self-arrange and switch from one technique to another when required. His duty is to facilitate the interactions of all the team members for smooth functioning and unified results.

Follow the link to read more: https://duecode.io/blog/what-is-technical-debt-in-scrum/

Code Quality Metrics

Artem — Fri, 30 Apr 2021 05:11:26 +0000

"Employing these Metrics to excel the performance of code directly impacts the profitability of the business. Achieving high-quality standards ultimately increases the ROI of the software. Consider it as a matter of choosing between investing excess time as well as resources initially or wasting the same later in fixing issues"

For the developers, practicing to write a good quality code in the initial phase of the coding job not only prevents the efforts and hours spent in précising the errors but also the costs are reduced. It leaves the engineers with little adjustments and complaint handling. So if your goal is high reliability, readability, and efficiency in the code, you need to employ quality checks for your code.

For software houses as well as individual developers, achieving excellence in code quality is not an option but a grade to achieve and retain in all given constraints. To save the burden of later repair and removing mistakes, the initial code should be well written in all possible details.

Defining Code Quality and ways to improve it
No doubt, a clean code is set down carefully with details and without employing shortcuts or compromised quality alternatives. Therefore a good code always meets the quality requirements. Unlike a code that is low in quality, it's not difficult to edit a quality code.

For the developers, maintaining the quality of task given the deadlines as well as the financial and operational constraints is altogether too challenging to handle. The most famous agile approach is often cited as the solution to most of the problems related to coding. We know that not fulfilling the requirements of excellence can leave the firms stuck up in the vicious cycle of technical debt. To avoid this burden, most software houses adopt the following measures during the entire stages of software evolution.

1.Clear Requirements
The one performing the task should be aware of the targets related to the performance of the software they have to achieve from the written code. This not only saves time in altering afterward but also lets the engineers write the exact code in the first place.

2.Regular Code Reviews
The companies that make doing the right thing a norm, as well as culture, always face the least quality issues. Regularly conducting code reviews is vital to assure least possible errors in the program Functional Testing. The frequent testing helps minimize the bugs. It does not guarantee the elimination of errors altogether.

Code Quality Metrics: The Business Impact
The most effective Code Quality Metrics are those that help tracking down the present flaws and ambiguities. The basic types of metrics for quality evaluation are:

Not amazingly, the qualitative estimations are more intuitive; quantitative options provide you with precise numbers to decide on the viability of your written crypto piece. So the qualitative techniques aid in categorizing the code as acceptable or rejectable, while the quantitative ones call for employing a formula as well as enter certain algorithms that exact the quality in terms of the levels of complexity.

The goal of every project is to generate an understandable and easily changeable codebase. Understandable writing is no less complex while staying appropriately formatted and documented. A changeable one, on the other hand, can be easily extended in the future. Therefore to grab an idea of the current levels of each of the quality issues leads to better results. In this case, the metrics of quality play vital role in current evaluations and provide a track for further amendments.

Employing these techniques to excel the performance of code directly impacts the profitability of the business. Achieving high-quality standards ultimately increases the ROI of the software. Consider it as a matter of choosing between investing excess time as well as resources initially or wasting the same later in fixing issues.

Qualitative Code Quality Metrics

1.Efficiency Metrics:
The efficiency of a code is measured by the amount of assets that are consumed to build a code. Time taken to run the code also counts in the efficiency of the code. Ultimately a code that is efficient should come up to the requirements and specifications of the owner.

Extensibility Metrics: Software ought to be developed using changeable and extendable code. It should be extended for newer versions of the original program when incorporating advanced features without disturbing the overall program and software functions. Higher extensibility results in viability in code.

3.Well-documented:
While documenting software, the programmer explains every single method and component along with the logic behind the various programming alternatives used. Reviewing such codes and assessing them gets less hectic than for those not properly listed. No doubt, the documentation part of the game plays a very important role in its quality assessment. It ensures that the program is readable as well as more maintainable for anyone who deals with it at any time. An undocumented code proves to be incomprehensible even by its developer sometimes.

4.Maintainability:
The degree of ease in incorporating the alterations later on together with the prospects of malfunctioning of the whole application while making revisions counts for the maintainability characteristic.

The number of lines of the code within the application provides the figure to evaluate the maintainability. Less maintainability is inferred when these lines are more than the average number. Moreover, it's pretty obvious while we attempt making alterations. The more the process is within the expected time frame; the higher is the level of maintainability.

5.Clarity:
A clear code is normally graded as the appreciated one. Most of the time, a single task of developing a code passes through various hands. Therefore, it must be understandable and comprehensible so that different engineers can easily read as well as work on it in various phases of development.

6.Readability and Code Formatting:
Readability is more when your code is communicating what it ought to be. It uses the correct formatting, marks, and indentations. When the code is well oriented with the formatting requirements of the particular coding language, it's more logical and understandable and we say that it's more readable.

7.Testability Metrics:
Programs higher on the testing metrics always result in better decision-making for future improvements by delivering exact information regarding future successful testing. High testability thus increases the efficiency of code by making the software working more reliable.

Quantitative Code Quality Metrics
1.Weighted Micro Function Points
One of the quantitative measures to use is WMFP. Just like scientific methods, WMFP, a sizing model that estimates employing mechanized measurements of a present original code by fragmenting it to smaller parts and generating numerous metrics displaying various levels of complexity. The findings are then tabulated into a numeric figure representing the rating. The result contains not only the mathematical computations but also the path of control, comments as well as code structures.

Weighted Micro Function Points Calculation
2.Halstead Complexity Measures
Complexity accounts for the factors that contain several interrelated forming intricate code designs. This makes reading a code too difficult. Various parameters aid in finding out the readability and maintainability difficulties. The most famous one is Halstead's metrics.

Halstead complexity measures
Halstead's metrics use indicators like the number of operators as well as operands to find out the complexity of the code in terms of errors, difficulty, efforts, size, vocabulary, and testing time. It views software as an execution of an algorithm with multiple symbols representing the operands or operators. The software is thus, a chronology of operators along with its linked operands that together provide with the complexity estimate.

Halstead complexity measures example
3.Cyclomatic Complexity
When joined with any size metric for example how many lines are there, this technique provides the marker of the testability and maintainability of the code. It employs decision-making parts within the program like switch-case, do-while, if-else to derive a graph.

It considers the underlying intricacy of the software through tallying the quantity of straightly autonomous lines across the program's original code. If the Cyclomatic finding is above 10, it means the quality needs to be corrected.

Follow the link to read more: https://duecode.io/blog/code-quality-metrics/