Stage 1 · Lesson 7 of 7
Technical debt as a portfolio
is the ongoing cost of past shortcuts and ageing code. Treat technical debt as a portfolio, not a list of complaints. Each item has a cost you keep paying, such as slower changes, incidents or load.
It also has a cost to fix. Some debt is cheap to carry and can stay. Some grows over time and blocks the roadmap.
Rank items by what they keep costing the business. Fix the ones in the path of planned work, and accept the rest on purpose, in writing. At staff level, the job is to make this visible to product and leadership in their terms.
"This cuts delivery time on payments features by a third" beats "the code is messy".
Common trapa big rewrite nobody can justify, which stalls halfway and leaves two systems to run.
A question to check yourself, an AI practice session and 1 cheat sheet entry come with the full roadmap. Unlock
Resources for this stage
Start with· follow one of these
- CoursePaidSystem Design Patterns: From Fundamentals to Real Systems
Design Gurus · Intermediate · Subscription
The distributed patterns behind most designs, to judge proposals from other teams
- GuideFreeMartin Fowler's Website
Martin Fowler · Intermediate
Free, clear writing on architecture styles, microservices and evolving designs