Software Design X-Rays

Escape the Technical-Debt Trap

A hotspot analysis is an efficient strategy to prioritize technical debt. Hotspots gives you a prioritized list of the parts of your codebase where you’re likely to spend most of your time. This means you can take an iterative approach as you drive improvements based on data from how you have worked with the code so far.

Back in Chapter 1, ​Why Technical Debt Isn’t Technical​, we talked about a system that had accumulated 4,000 years of technical debt. It’s a high number, but all too common in legacy codebases. Now we’ve seen that not all technical debt is important. Using hotspots, you can ignore most of those 4,000 years of technical debt and focus on the parts that really matter to your ability to maintain the ...