Agile Software Development: Dealing with Legacy Code and Technical Debt

Learn how to embrace a legacy system and improve it while paying down technical debt.

Introduction

• Embrace the legacy and tackle the debt
• What you should know
• Definitions

1. Getting Started: Review the Technical Debt

• Familiarize yourself
• Remember the prime directive
• Take ownership
• Set up a dev environment
• Skim the code

2. Fence in the Technical Debt

• Technical debt grows without tests
• Create a test suite (if one is missing)
• Run the test suite
• Handle failing tests
• Build out test coverage
• Build dependency behavior tests

3. Improve Your Tools

• Aging tools make technical debt worse
• Introduce dependency management
• Update dependencies and tools

4. Pay Down Technical Debt

• Remove noise and distractions
• Read by refactoring
• Isolate external services and devices
• Code like a scientist

5. Keep Technical Debt at Bay

• Technical debt will grow like weeds
• Stay test driven
• Practice refactoring
• Keep code clean
• Monitor code quality

Conclusion

• Next steps