Awesome Technical Debt
Tags: agile, architecture, codequality
Published: 2019-08-12 23:38:06

---
title: Awesome Technical Debt
published: true
description: A curated list of Technical Debt talks, articles and books.
tags: agile, architecture, codequality, bestofdev
---

Follow the up-to-date list: https://github.com/labcodes/awesome-technical-debt

---

# Awesome Technical Debt [![Awesome](https://awesome.re/badge.svg)](https://awesome.re)

> A curated list of Technical Debt talks, articles and books.


## Contents

- [Talks](#talks)
- [Articles](#articles)
- [Books](#books)


## Talks

Talks recorded in video related to Technical Debt

- [Debt Metaphor - 
Ward Cunningham
](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqeJFYwnkjE) - Ward Cunningham reflects on the history, motivation and common misunderstanding of the "debt metaphor" as motivation for refactoring.
- [Escaping the Technical Debt Cycle - Michael Feathers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hL6g1aTGvo) - Most teams have some amount of technical debt. Others are crushed by it. It really shouldn’t be this way. For decades we’ve been aware of good development practice. We know the things that we should do to avoid incurring technical debt and start paying it back. Clearly, something else is going on.
- [Technical debt isn't technical - Einar W. Høst
](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXyNZYDO07Q) - Technical debt is not primarily caused by incompetent developers, architecture astronauts, unrealistic UX people or even stupid project managers. What causes it then? It is a symptom of weak abstractions, which stems from insufficient understanding and modelling of the problem domain. 
- [The Economics of Software Design - J.B. Rainsberger](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HecgbghFTk) - Every month, someone new asks me the question, "How do I convince my manager to let me refactor?" While it's true that a manager shouldn't constrain the programmer's plans to deliver high-quality code, the fact remains that some organisations allow their managers to assert this level of micro-control. In this talk I outline a set of models for justifying evolutionary design with basic economic concepts that relate directly to delivering, planning, and funding software projects
- [Demanding Professionalism in Software Development - Robert C. Martin (Uncle Bob)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0O1VVqRSK0) - Robert C. Martin explains in his own unique style why professionalism is so important for software development teams and their managers. This event has been recorded live at an event co-hosted by Agile Quebec City and Elapse Technologies in Septembre 2012.


## Articles

Articles and blogposts related to Technical Debt.
- [Ward Explains Debt Metaphor - Ward Cunningham](http://wiki.c2.com/?WardExplainsDebtMetaphor)
- [TechnicalDebt - Martin Fowler](https://martinfowler.com/bliki/TechnicalDebt.html)
- [TechnicalDebtQuadrant - Martin Fowler](https://martinfowler.com/bliki/TechnicalDebtQuadrant.html)
- [Is High Quality Software Worth the Cost? - Martin Fowler](https://martinfowler.com/articles/is-quality-worth-cost.html)
- [The Financial Implications of Technical Debt - Erik Frederick](https://www.toptal.com/finance/part-time-cfos/technical-debt)
- [Defining and Dealing with Technical Debt - Geoff Graham](https://css-tricks.com/defining-and-dealing-with-technical-debt/)
- [The Human Cost of Tech Debt - Erik Dietrich](https://daedtech.com/human-cost-tech-debt/)
- [A Mess is not a Technical Debt - Uncle Bob](https://sites.google.com/site/unclebobconsultingllc/a-mess-is-not-a-technical-debt)
- [Technical debt 101 - Maiz Lulkin](https://medium.com/@joaomilho/festina-lente-e29070811b84)
- [Pragmatic Technical Debt Management - Ganesh Samarthyam, Girish Suryanarayana and Tushar Sharma](https://www.infoq.com/articles/pragmatic-technical-debt/)
- [What is Evolutionary Design? - Adi Bolboaca](https://mozaicworks.com/blog/what-is-evolutionary-design/)


## Books

Books related to Technical Debt.
- [Refactoring for Software Design Smells - Ganesh Samarthyam, Girish Suryanarayana and Tushar Sharma](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0128013974)
- [Working Effectively with Legacy Code - Michael Feathers](https://www.amazon.com/Working-Effectively-Legacy-Michael-Feathers/dp/0131177052)

## Contribute

Contributions welcome! Read the [contribution guidelines](https://github.com/labcodes/awesome-technical-debt/blob/master/contributing.md) first.