This artilcle was updated on 29 May, 2024

Software development is a highly volatile industry, and new project management tools, frameworks, and methodologies come and go as quickly as we create buzzwords to describe them.

Some methods, like lean development, make more sense than others, but not a single new approach, trick, or technique can dismiss the fact that "the quality of work is constrained by a project's budget, deadlines, and scope." Sometimes, we can bend the game rules a bit, but breaking them entirely is never an option.

In this article, we'll examine technical debt to discover how it emerges and why and provide solutions for resolving individual tech debt issues.

The quality of software development: scope, cost and time.

What is technical debt?

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Check out our glossary entry on technical debt for a clear and succinct description of this concept. For the purposes of this article, it's enough to know that technical, or tech, debt is the price a company will pay later for choosing a simpler, faster, yet less reliable option today. Any compromise you make to release products or features faster in the present will accumulate a greater volume of work to do in the future. Moreover, technical debt—just like any other form of debt—accumulates interest unless carefully managed. 

This interest makes new feature releases more expensive and less stable. Your team will waste time dealing with compatibility issues and bug fixes, and they won't be able to focus on developing new functions.

Straight to the point: Immense technical debt inflates software maintenance costs to the point where supporting the original solution is no longer an option.

The cost software maintenance vs. the cost of new feature releases.

Is technical debt always bad?

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Tech debt isn't always bad. In fact, it's almost always unavoidable when there's a compromise between speed, cost, and quality. However, the reasons behind tech debt can lead to more severe issues later, especially if they're due to poor management decisions. Likewise, if managers ignore tech debt or make poor engineering decisions, the problem can grow into a danger to a product or company.

Why do projects fall victim to technical debt?

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If tech debt sounds so bad, why do people let it become a problem? Two reasons: time and money.

Any business, big or small, needs new features. Fast! So it's no wonder borrowing time and financial resources seems like a legitimate solution.

The quality of software development: scope and time

Most startups are underfunded. Apart from the competitive and volatile markets, the lack of resources is often cited as the primary reason for product failure. In other words, two of the three sides of the iron triangle are off the table before development begins. 

Yet, young entrepreneurs and seasoned veterans of the investment scene take the risk. Everyone wants to be in the 1% of successful small companies that make it to the top. 

Few truly care about technical debt because technical debt isn't the main factor determining whether a startup will promptly raise investment. The most important factors are time to market, competition, and a growing user base.

The quality of software development: scope and cost.

Then there are enterprises, the huge players who are pretty slow in adopting change. These companies have spent years and decades perfecting business processes tailored to maximize profit and ROI. 

These companies are often run by people with a business-first mindset who lack a strong background in IT. Sadly, they see development as a bottomless pit of unnecessary investment.

Why waste $100K on refactoring if the product works as is?

Why invest in experienced coders when middle or junior engineers are speaking the same language?

Why waste time designing architecture when the market demands new functionality?

These and similar questions trouble the minds of decision-makers and product owners with a business background. To sum up, these realities lead to situations that lead teams to fall into debt:

  1. Time pressure: Developers often face the pressure to deliver the product on time. This might lead to deploying apps that are not fully featured or contain bugs. Development teams might sacrifice an app's performance to get to the market as quickly as possible.
  2. Market change: Even if you release a fully featured app, you might face changes in customer expectations. New market opportunities present challenges to a company.
  3. Outdated technology: To develop an application, you need several coding languages, developer frameworks, and libraries, which can become obsolete and lose support over time.

These overarching reasons result in specific examples of tech debt, which we will examine below.

The implications of being in debt to your own product

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Immense technical debt affects the bottom line. What do you do when a website you're trying to access fails to load quickly? The odds are you'll leave to look for a different website. 53% of mobile users will flee if a website fails to load within 3 seconds. The same can be said about any product that continuously experiences downtime due to the system's painful introduction of new features.

Services that rely on impulse sales are the best example. Downtime inconveniences established routines, especially in the transportation industry, where customers continuously interact with taxi services. People are late, become annoyed at lagging applications, and taxi drivers lose their profits. Moreover, transportation is a competitive market, where competitors bombard users with promo codes and offer a service that always works. Over time, each downtime shrinks the customer base. Similarly, large projects will lose their client base over time if they continuously expose their clients to bugs and downtime.

Now that you have an understanding of tech debt and its causes let's examine some of its manifestations in projects.

What are examples of tech debt?

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Here are 8 examples of tech debt and practices that lead to debt, including explanations of why they are dangerous to your projects and products and how they can be resolved.

1. Legacy code

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This code is old and outdated compared with newer approaches and technologies.

Reasons it's a problem:

  1. It may not work well with new features
  2. Created by developers who may have left
  3. Doesn't always get updated or refactored

Solutions:

  1. Review the code in small batches
  2. Prioritize refactoring and update needs

2. Insufficient testing

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Not enough tests were conducted to consider all the possible scenarios in which a product could encounter difficulties. May be done to release the product faster.

Reasons it's a problem:

  1. The product isn't 100% ready for all possible scenarios
  2. Users may lose trust due to many bugs
  3. Security vulnerabilities

Solutions:

  1. Define priorities before a project; where is testing?
  2. Implement automated testing tools
  3. Plan for testing in product development

3. Poor IT leadership

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When those in decision-making positions don't understand new technologies and solutions but proceed to adopt them. This can burden a company with unnecessary and/or inefficient stack.

Reasons it's a problem:

  1. Developers use tools now that may be replaced later by different leadership
  2. The tools aren't effective at solving the product's problems and may create new issues
  3. Could introduce new approaches regularly that stunt progress

Solutions:

  1. Distribute leadership among several stakeholders, including developers
  2. Explain to customers if a certain product or service isn't suitable for their project

4. Inferior code quality

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A product's code may include hard coding, different coding styles or standards, may not have been refactored, or contain duplicating code.

Reasons it's a problem:

  1. Poor code will not work in all scenarios
  2. It can be difficult to understand
  3. New team members will need more time to learn and understand this code
  4. It leads to more complex code that is difficult to maintain

Solutions:

  1. Establish code standards that all team members follow
  2. Schedule refactoring and code cleanup into the project
  3. Break up code into smaller sections to clean

5. Outdated libraries or dependencies

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A product uses third-party libraries or dependencies that aren't supported or that have issues.

Reasons it's a problem:

  1. The product will experience incompatibility with newer libraries
  2. Security vulnerabilities in the product's code
  3. The product may crash

Solutions:

  1. Schedule regular reviews within the project
  2. Automate the process to send alerts about outdated libraries

6. Unsatisfactory documentation

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There may also be no documentation, or developers may hold back information on purpose or not think it's important to share.

Reasons it's a problem:

  1. Team and stakeholders may lack knowledge about products and services
  2. No or slow transfer of knowledge to other teams and members
  3. Decrease in value of developer's work

Solutions:

  1. Holding developers accountable for proper documentation
  2. Introducing documentation as part of DevOps and not only using technical writers

7. Leaving bugs unresolved

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This is when the developers are aware of bugs but don't fix them, and new ones appear on top of the old issues.

Reasons it's a problem:

  1. Product and software crashes
  2. Decrease in customer trust
  3. Security vulnerabilities

Solutions:

  1. Make bug tracking and resolution a priority part of the development process
  2. Implement bug-tracking software effectively to automate the process

8. Poorly defined user requirements

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A lack of understanding of what the end user should experience will result in wasted time and other resources.

Reasons it's a problem:

  1. Unnecessary features added to the product
  2. More time is required for developers to redo the product for the client
  3. The release deadline needs to be extended

Solutions:

  1. Regular communication with stakeholders to show progress and verify their vision
  2. Agile practices to implement changes if and when they appear
  3. Provide clear explanations if something won't work

Managing tech debt

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The list above provides suggestions for resolving these examples of tech debt; as you have noticed, there are some common remedies for all of them. These are essential areas to consider in your project over the long term to ensure that you effectively control and manage your tech debt as a whole:

  • Tests
  • Documentation
  • Software architecture
  • Infrastructure planning
  • Knowledge management

Tech debt isn't a matter of individual issues. As mentioned earlier, it's a conscious act of sacrificing reliability today for a simpler and faster solution to release a product within a deadline. It happens and will continue to occur within software development. The main question is not "Do you have tech debt?" but "What will you do about your tech debt?" Effective tech debt management begins with developing proper software development processes like Agile and DevOps.

Mad Devs' position on technical debt

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At Mad Devs, we like to view software technical debt similarly to financial debt. You repay it not just with the sum borrowed but with interest. When you need to extend the system, you must make an extra effort to implement the additional features. This extra effort is the interest you pay for the technical debt.

We believe the best way to deal with technical debt is to break up the 'sum' of the debt into smaller amounts you pay off. Spend a couple of days defeating cruft in your code, at least partly. There's a chance it might be enough for now, just like paying off a small part of your credit card debt so that you can pay off the whole amount later. Setting aside extra time to work on part of the technical debt makes future feature implementation cheaper.

Mad Devs' engineers never leave a project "as it is." Even if the previous team has accumulated heavy technical debt, we manage it by prioritizing tasks correctly. Technical debt management doesn't mean that work on new features won't continue. For us, it means that along with implementing new features, we're fixing accumulated issues. 

Check out our article on tech debt management techniques to learn how Mad Devs engineers "pay off" their debt and reduce interest.

Technical Debt ► What Is It and How to Manage It?

Explore the topic of what technical debt is, what causes it, how to manage and reduce it and how to prevent it from accumulating.

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Pricing Strategies in Custom Software Development.

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How much does custom software development cost

1. How Much Does Custom Software Development Cost?

Mad Devs Customer University is a series of publications about pricing strategies aimed to help customers choose the right contractor and maximize benefits from working with them. We will address every aspect of customer-contractor interactions to show how to achieve a truly profitable partnership. 

2. Software Development Pricing Models Guide

2. Software Development Pricing Models Guide

Historically, organizations approached software development outsourcing as a black box where you throw away things you don’t want to do. The field is changing as the emerging markets have proved to provide quality and shown the advantages of higher dollar purchasing power.With so much at stake, traditional outsourcing engagement models thus moved towards partnership models. So now, businesses increasingly outsource things they can’t do.As a result, the emerging cooperation models have created numerous pricing models.However, once you start digging deeper with your research and evaluating IT contractors’ proposals, you’ll start to see not only the big difference in total cost but also the difference in pricing models used to calculate the cost.Ultimately, you may feel like companies are trying to take advantage of your lack of experience, and you can’t identify a potential long-term partner.In this publication, Mad Devs Customer University addresses your puzzling questions about pricing models with clarity and transparency.Unfortunately, it can be hard to determine the exact cost of a software development project. Unlike building products from an assembly line, estimating the cost of a software development project involves taking into account various factors.1. Human resourcesThe number of people who are involved in the project will have a huge effect on the cost of the project. You will need to hire a team of developers if you are not outsourcing the project. The size of the team depends on how complex the project is and how experienced the individuals are.Your team's work environment will also affect how productive they are. Having a good working relationship with one another will help them become more efficient. There may be issues that they need to resolve, but the more projects they work on, the more they will be able to improve their efficiency.The ability of your team to avoid conflict and work efficiently will have a huge impact on the project's budget. Make sure that everyone on the team is qualified and has the necessary skills to carry out their duties. Overworking the team can cause them to waste time and make them more prone to errors.2. Project complexity & sizeThe complexity of a software application is also a factor that will affect the cost of the project. It can be very challenging to develop a complex program due to the number of steps and calculations that it requires.The size of the software that you're developing will also be influenced by the number of screens that will be built. Having too many screens will increase the cost of the project.3. Software functionalityOne of the most important factors that will affect the cost of a software project is the functionality of the application. Having too many features will increase the cost of the development. It can also take longer to build and test a large number of applications.4. Scope of workThe larger the scope of the project, the more expensive it will be. Although the project will likely have a fixed schedule and human resources, the scope can change over time. This is because constant stakeholder feedback will help determine the cost and the quality of the project.5. UX/UIThe cost of a custom design depends on the features and scope of the project. Having a well-designed and engaging user interface is very important for a successful software development project. The right mix of animations, visual elements, and unique navigation elements will keep your users coming back.6. IntegrationsAnother factor that can affect the cost of a software project is the integration of its features with other business applications. For example, having multiple third-party tools such as CRM will increase the cost of the project.7. MigrationDifferent migration techniques and the unique requirements of different storage vendors can also add to the complexity of the process. Having a customized approach is also important to ensure that the data that you're moving will fit seamlessly into another system.8. Extra expensesEven though you're paying for the software, you should also consider the additional costs that the service provider might charge. These costs might not be related to the developers' hourly rates. It can be necessary if the complexity of the project increases or there is technical debt.Aside from the hourly rate, there are also additional costs that the service provider might charge. These additional costs can pile up and add up to a huge bill.Some businesses will also require that they pay for the licenses that the developers will need to complete the project. Others will require that they pay for the infrastructure costs associated with buying or leasing software.Most people don't realize that there are also maintenance fees that are included in the cost of a software development project. These fees can range from minor repairs to security updates.So when we’ve covered the major factors that influence project cost, we can move to pricing models. It can be overwhelming to build software from scratch. Not only does it involve writing code, but it also involves various phases such as architecture, design, testing, and deployment.To avoid getting bogged down by the various steps involved in building a robust software solution, companies should keep in mind that there are various pricing models available. They should also be aware of the premium options that are available for their project.With pricing models, companies can easily understand what they are paying for and what benefits they will get from their projects. There are several types of pricing models that can help companies develop software: Fixed price, Time and Material, Outstaffing, Dedicated team, Hybrid, and Gain-sharing model.Let’s look closer at each of them.

How Developer Seniority Level Matters to Software Development Cost

3. How Developer Seniority Level Matters to Software Development Cost

In this article, Mad Devs Customer University addresses the main factor in the cost of software development: the software developer seniority level. The hourly rate of a top-level developer can be dramatically different from (sometimes even a few times higher than) the rate of an entry-level one. Here, we want to help you figure out what these levels are and how they affect the price.Picture it: you have a project in mind, but you have no idea what software developer qualifications are required for it. Some IT contractors offer you Senior developers (so the rate and the price immediately soar), and others suggest that Mid-level developers or Juniors will do just fine. How do you know what’s right? Your best interest is to make sure that the team working with you does not have underqualified or overqualified professionals in it. If they are overqualified, you’ll end up paying more than necessary. If they are underqualified, the development will take longer than it could, and you’ll end up, again, overpaying.The problem, however, is that the qualifications you’re interested in are not easily defined. The widespread hierarchy goes: Junior, Middle, Senior, Team Lead. But there are no universal criteria in the industry for who falls into which category. Each IT company has its own understanding of what knowledge, skills, competencies, and experience a developer must obtain to climb up this ladder.Therefore, we will look at the question of qualification from two angles. On the client side, when he/she needs a certain level of expertise. And from the developers' side, how the career ladder of Software engineer levels looks like.Let’s start with first part.

Top countries to outsource software development

4. Top Countries to Outsource Software Development

Mad Devs Customer University continues its series of publications about pricing strategies to help customers in the IT industry maximize benefits in their work with contractors. Here, we will address the issue that many customers are implicitly or explicitly concerned about: does it matter where your team of developers is from? If so, how will geography affect your work with the team? What regions to choose from?First, it’s important to stress that geography matters, but it’s not the number-one factor. We want to take it off the table right away: you can find the right team for your project or organization anywhere on the globe. Modern communication technologies have made it possible to reach talents anywhere. Companies are shifting away from the traditional rule book when it comes to hiring and managing development teams, as the rise of remote work has forced many to rethink their approach. Working with a remote team can be very easy, as more data protection and distance work software have emerged.However, in some regions, you may be more likely to find a team that fits you in terms of approaches and culture. Things to consider include:And one of the main points - don’t overestimate the importance of your team’s location. Let’s elaborate on this.Assumption: countries with higher dollar purchasing power charge lower prices. In fact, it’s not always the case. Skills and experience are more important, and a high-rate developer from a developing country can cost as much as a high-rate developer from a developed country.Why doesn’t the developers’ location play a major role in influencing the cost of the software? Is it fair to pay a developer from San Francisco the same amount as a developer from Vietnam?They can deliver the same quality of work, so everything’s fair.Naturally, the towering leader in terms of senior developers’ average salaries is the United States, but it in no way suggests that the work of developers from elsewhere will be necessarily cheaper or of poorer quality.Too many factors shape average salary: taxes, cost of living, and income level, to name a few.Conclusion: check the skills and experience ahead of the actual location or the legal address. (And if you still want to narrow down your search to the region, jump right into the middle of the article.)

Cooperation models with software companies

5. Cooperation Models With Software Companies

Remember how most of us have seen various industries over the years? Big manufacturing industries will always be stable and profitable. After all, they are the only ones that can meet the various needs of the constantly growing population of our planet. The hospitality business will never lose its relevance because people will always want to travel and eat. Clothing and makeup manufacturing will always be in demand because people want to look good. But the last couple of years has dramatically changed our idea of which industries are more or less stable, especially in a global pandemic or financial or energy crisis. Because people mostly stay at home and spend their work and free time online, the demand changes.We see how people are not as willing to buy cars, which immediately increases the cost of production. Airlines are sending empty planes from one country to another unprofitable to avoid losing contracts with airports. Cruise ship owners pay a lot of money for the parking and maintenance of their ships in ports. Few people visit restaurants or shops. 

Why IT Projects Are Late and Exceed Budgets

6. Here Is Why IT Projects Are Late and Exceed Budgets

Exceeding the budget for a project is a much more common problem than you might imagine. And not only do young startups face it, but large companies as well. So why, having such advanced business analysis and project management tools, can we still observe such cases? Of course, we do not take into account completely unique and unpredictable factors. In most cases, despite advanced tools and approaches, budget overruns often occur due to trivial reasons. We'll also tell you how to deal with such reasons so your project won't exceed your budget a few times. Enjoy the reading!

Red Flags in Custom Software Development.

7. Top Common Pitfalls of Outsourcing Software Development

In the early days of the software industry, developers were working alone on their products for years. And one day, their products have taken over the market and made their creators rich and famous. Of course, this was deserved. But it is worth noting that this was not because their products were the best, but rather because they were unique at the time. However, the software industry was rapidly changing, becoming more extensive and complex. The competition was growing, and the struggle for users' attention becoming much fiercer. So the market became filled with better and better products and services. And we got more and more used to the constantly increasing quality and amount of them. Now we're not willing to compromise at all, knowing that we can always find something better. This is all possible because more professionals from different fields, not only technical, are getting involved in development. Now any competitive product is the combined work of developers, designers, analysts, marketers, and managers. This is just a short list of specialists who have found a new home in the software industry. For example, when Steve Jobs was creating the Macintosh, he even invited zoologists who understand the anatomy to help him find the best proportions for the future device that fit perfectly. But the more specialists are involved in software development, the more processes it includes, and the more difficult it is to manage them. And each process must be treated with special attention. Because each of them can be the main factor of success and failure of the future product, you need to know the pitfalls of software development in general, and particularly the main pitfalls of project management.At Mad Devs, for example, we pay individual attention to each process in development. From specifying goals and the most suitable means to achieve them to using the best design, development, testing, and support practices. And this careful attention makes our customers want to contact us again and again. After all, they can always trust transparency, flexibility, stability of development, and the high quality of the final product. You can see this by looking at any of our cases.

Software Maintenance Costs.

8. Software Maintenance Costs

Having a brilliant idea for a product is only half the battle; software development is similar. When a product is technically completed, it doesn't mean it will work as it was supposed to or meet customers' needs. There is always the need to improve, re-design, or keep it up-to-date. For this reason, software maintenance is of the utmost importance.But very often, technical founders and engineering managers face the high costs of maintaining a product. How to not overpay for maintenance and support IT solutions at the right price? Today, Mad Devs Customer University turns to the best practices in the industry to answer this question.Software maintenance is the process of updating and improving software after its initial release to the public. It occurs after completing tasks related to engineering, architecture, design, implementation, testing, and software deployment.Product maintenance is not just bug fixing or adding more lines of code. It is a comprehensive set of activities in adjusting and modifying the software. It can take up to 2 years to build a software system, while its maintenance can last for 15 to 20 years.

Technical Debt in software development.

9. Introduction to Technical Debt

This artilcle was updated on 29 May, 2024Software development is a highly volatile industry, and new project management tools, frameworks, and methodologies come and go as quickly as we create buzzwords to describe them.Some methods, like lean development, make more sense than others, but not a single new approach, trick, or technique can dismiss the fact that "the quality of work is constrained by a project's budget, deadlines, and scope." Sometimes, we can bend the game rules a bit, but breaking them entirely is never an option.In this article, we'll examine technical debt to discover how it emerges and why and provide solutions for resolving individual tech debt issues.

Software development cost estimation

10. Mad Devs' Software Development Cost Estimation

Determining how long and how much it will take to deliver a new software product is one of the hardest things to do in software development. But the main critical problem that arises during software cost estimation is a lack of determination on how long and how much it will take to develop a new software product. It is inherently difficult to estimate software costs, and humans are terrible at predicting absolute outcomes. However, this problem can only be resolved by transparent communication and development processes based on collaboration and co-creation. Mad Devs is a software development company, which specializes in developing highly scalable, enterprise-level software solutions, and consulting. We have been engineering our partners’ growth since 2004. Our goal is to deliver value to our customers in the long run by solving end users’ problems. For us, no two projects are the same. Each is unique in what it sets out to achieve and unique in the myriad of parameters that form its existence. For years, we’ve seen new players in the IT industry struggle to find insights into custom software development. Mad Devs has summarized its expertise by introducing Customer University: a series of articles that bring light to questions that need to be asked during negotiation and proposal evaluation stages. We believe in starting the partnership by building trust from the very beginning. Therefore, we understand that pricing is one of the customers' main issues. To do this, we explain the mechanism of project estimation transparently. For convenience, we have divided the technical process into four stages.When we receive a partnership request, we foremost assess the proposed project to see if we are a proper contractor to take it on. Several features impact our work process, such as expertise in questions, the scope of the project, and can we cover the project with our resources. Mad Devs believes that signing a contract is a long-term commitment, so it is essential to consider every detail. We believe customers' business success depends on whether we have enough expertise and capacity to deliver the project.After we ensure that we have enough expertise and capacity to deliver the product, we start evaluating the customer's product vision and check whether it has a proven record of market fit. Unfortunately, it is unlikely to build a valuable product for end-users without precise product specifications and requirements. Such projects usually involve high risks and a lack of personal growth for our developers. Instead of developing features, the IT team will be trapped in a circle of re-developing one module repeatedly and wasting the budget. Cost is a product of time and team members. Suppose you employ people for a more extended period, the cost increases. Adding more team members increases the cost of delivering the same business value. We expect a certain level of preparedness from our clients. Please note if you have the following problems: