How Google Measures and Manages Tech Debt - by Abi Noda

This is the latest issue of my newsletter. Each week I cover the latest research and perspectives on developer productivity. This week I read Defining, Measuring, and Managing Technical Debt, a paper by Google researchers Ciera Jaspan and Collin Green. This is part of the "Developer Productivity for Humans Series," which also includes papers on the challenges of measuring developer productivity and lessons learned about productivity during the pandemic. Over the past several years, Google made a deliberate effort to better manage technical debt. Of course, managing technical debt is difficult without being able to define or measure it. This paper describes Google’s approach to defining and measuring technical debt, along with their efforts to manage it. Google’s effort to better manage technical debt was motivated by the results of their quarterly engineering satisfaction survey. This survey asks engineers to indicate the extent to which they are hindered by unnecessary complexity and

This is the latest issue of my newsletter. Each week I cover the latest research and perspectives on developer productivity. This week I read Defining, Measuring, and Managing Technical Debt, a paper by Google researchers Ciera Jaspan and Collin Green. This is part of the "Developer Productivity for Humans Series," which also includes papers on the challenges of measuring developer productivity and lessons learned about productivity during the pandemic. Over the past several years, Google made a deliberate effort to better manage technical debt. Of course, managing technical debt is difficult