Each tab in the spreadsheet refers to a specific area of Salesforce that can contribute to technical debt. Each area should be documented and then analysed to provide insight into where your Salesforce instance is healthy and where it is weighed down by technical debt.
Table of Contents
How do we measure technical debt?
8 Metrics for Measuring Your Technical DebtNew Bugs vs. Closed Bugs. … Debt Index. The debt index is based on a ratio of resolved issues to total issues, where higher priority issues weigh more heavily. … Code Quality. … Cycle Time. … Code Churn. … Code Coverage. … Code Ownership. … Technical Debt Ratio (TDR)
What is technical debt in Salesforce?
Technical Debt in Salesforce Technical debt occurs when coding or customization decisions are made with time, budget, and simplicity as the priority, instead of planning strategically to address the needs of the entire organization.
How do you make technical debt visible?
Make Technical Debt Visible The decrease in velocity can be translated in financial terms. To help make technical debt more visible at the technical level, consider using a defect-tracking system, adding the debt to the product backlog, or keeping a separate technical debt backlog.
How do you manage technical debt in the product?
Here are some tips to help.Make how to manage technical debt part of every conversation with your developers. … Be an organizational advocate for maintenance. … Develop a KPI tied to basic product expectations. … Encourage your development team to track technical debt in the same place they track other development items.More items…
What is meant by technical debt?
Technical debt (also known as tech debt or code debt) describes what results when development teams take actions to expedite the delivery of a piece of functionality or a project which later needs to be refactored. In other words, it’s the result of prioritizing speedy delivery over perfect code.
Is documentation a technical debt?
One of the significant and under-investigated elements of technical debt is documentation debt, which may occur when code is created without supporting internal documentation, such as code comments.
How does agile track technical debt?
One of the most efficient ways to minimize technical debt is to structure your project better. Project management tools — such as Hive Trello – can help teams track development statuses and keep on schedule. Another way to reduce technical debt is to monitor code troubles and fix them as quickly as possible.
How do you handle technical debt in Scrum?
5 Ways to Tackle Technical Debt in Scrum – Make Small Improvements For Big GainsMention Technical Debt in Stand-Up. … Adjust Your Definition of Done. … Refine Your Code Review Process. … Create Tickets in Your Backlog. … Add a Project to Your Product Roadmap. … Always Provide Value.
What is an example of technical debt?
Here are some real-life examples of tech debt causes: An unreasonable deadline that pressures the team into a quick release. Using an easier, familiar platform instead of an optimal one. Low-quality software design decisions.
Who is responsible for managing technical debt?
Who is responsible for managing the Technical Debt in Scrum? Not only the Scrum Master but the whole team is responsible for managing the technical debt in the whole development project. The Scrum Master makes it feasible for the group members to self-arrange and switch from one technique to another when required.
Technical debt and its impact on businesses
Technical debt is a term that originates from software engineering and refers to the implied cost of additional rework caused by choosing a quick and dirty—but suboptimal—solution.
Quick ways to remove CRM technical debt
With Salesforce technical debt, I most commonly see process builder issues because it’s very easy to create dozens of different process builders and set them all live. Unfortunately, this isn’t a best practice and can result in many different processes firing simultaneously and even triggering one another until they time out.
So, what is tech debt?
Wikipedia defines t echnical debt (also known as design debt or code debt) as “a concept in software development that reflects the implied cost of additional rework caused by choosing an easy (limited) solution now instead of using a better approach that would take longer.
Why you should care about tech debt
Now, tech debt isn’t inherently bad. However, much like financial debt, it could potentially lead to serious problems if you don’t pay it back. Choosing the easiest and quickest solution over the best solution is a short-term fix. And, in the long term, you may incur more cost and spend more time maintaining or enhancing that quick, easy solution.
How to find tech debt
How do you find the outdated or not utilized components outside of combing your org manually? Salesforce Optimizer to the rescue! Optimizer is a native app that evaluates your Salesforce org to determine how your company uses its features and provides recommendations to optimize feature usage, including ways to simplify customizations and drive user adoption..
How to know what a better solution approach is
Given there are many ways to build in Salesforce, how do you know which solution provides the best or most optimal design? It comes with knowledge and experience. The solutions I built when I was a new admin are not necessarily the same solutions I would build today, nearly a decade later.
When to address tech debt
The phrase “pay me now, or pay me later” comes to mind when thinking about tech debt.
The costs of technical debt
The costs of technical debt are very real and manifest themselves on your company’s P&L. Examples of these very real costs are:
Tackling technical debt
It’s clear how easy it is to generate technical debt and why your company should care about it. But how exactly do you go about tackling this issue, particularly when you’re still stretched in terms of time and resources?
Making the most of your audit
You will get the most out of your audit if it is conducted by someone senior in your organization, like a systems architect, operations manager or consultant. The reason for this is that you need someone with both context and technical insight to determine whether or not the system is running optimally.
Interested in learning more?
One of the services Candybox offers is an audit of your Salesforce org for a fixed fee. We can help dig into the nitty-gritty of your Salesforce instance and identify the key areas where you can add value, reduce costs and mitigate technical debt.
What Is Technical Debt?
Technical debt can mean a lot of things in different contexts. But in Salesforce, it typically refers to the cost of implementing ‘shortcuts’ as you customize your Org.
High Interest vs. Low Interest Debt
Salesforce Ben differentiates between two types of tech debt in Salesforce: high interest and low interest. We loved their analogy.
The Problem With Institutional Knowledge
One of the reasons technical debt in Salesforce is so hard to deal with is that knowledge of it — and of the system in general — is often concentrated in a small team or, in some cases, a single employee.
What Does Technical Debt Look Like?
So far, we’ve talked a lot about the theory behind technical debt — why and how it happens. But what does it look like in practice? Some of the most common forms of technical debt in Salesforce are:
Tech Debt and SOX
If your Org is or will be subject to SOX, a big part of compliance is demonstrating to auditors that every change to revenue-related customizations and configuration data has been properly documented and approved. But the more technical debt you have, the less visible these changes will be.
Four Ways to Reduce Tech Debt
The most important process for avoiding the technical debt in your Salesforce Org is to acknowledge its inevitability — and plan for it ahead of time. As we’ve mentioned, technical debt doesn’t have to be a bad thing, so long as it’s properly managed.
What is Technical Debt?
Technical debt is “the ongoing cost of expedient decisions made when implementing code” click here to read more
How Technical Debt Impacts the Long Term Cost of Ownership
A common pitfall that enterprises face is only considering the short term costs associated with Salesforce customization. It is easier to think tangibly about short term consulting, internal time, and subscription costs.
Why Many Enterprises Do Not Consider LTCO
Often organizations are looking for a consultancy or their internal team to address one specific Salesforce issue at a time. Managing and optimizing Salesforce in this manner leads to Salesforce processes/customization being designed irrespective of each other.
Salesforce Maintenance: 5 Best Practices for Enterprises
To avoid monopolizing your Salesforce team’s capacity on fixes and stalling/blocking necessary deployments, follow the five best practices below to develop sustainable Salesforce solutions that decrease technical debt.
Wrap Up
Often solutions are built quickly to solve a pain point without considering the cost of annual maintenance. It is decisions like these that eat up team resources, stall new and important projects due to a lack of capacity, and increase technical debt. Before implementing a solution, always consider the long term cost of ownership.
1. Prioritize
Understand the technical layout of your org to prioritize your decision-making by highest impact items.
2. Refactor
Do you have ancient triggers? What you will notice is that a large amount the logic triggers were needed for many years ago can now be built with declarative tools. While Flow logic still has some gaps, Salesforce Flow is definitely a powerful tool we hear about every release cycle.
3. Partner
While you should own the process, getting help is an important part of the process. There are hundreds of Salesforce consulting partners that offer their expertise to Salesforce customers, working effectively alongside the internal Salesforce admin.
5. Cover Yourself
A common feeling for a new admin is deleting some code (trying to do the right thing) only to get an irate email from a VP of Sales that they can’t close their opportunity and are getting a paragraph long error message.
What is technical debt?
Technical debt is the cost of additional rework caused by choosing an easy solution now instead of using a better approach that would take longer to develop. It’s also known as a concept called “Shift Left” – “ the earlier you catch problems, the cheaper it is to fix them .”. Technical debt used to be a developer’s problem – when taking shortcuts …
Why is Salesforce a problem?
It is a big issue because Salesforce has become a much more strategic supplier in technology strategies to win, serve and retain customers. ”. The good news is (as Forrester says) that this is a “solved problem” – while technical debt cannot be completely avoided, it can at least be mitigated.
Is Salesforce a powerful platform?
Salesforce is a very powerful platform, but as Forrester pointed out back in 2017, over zealous (or uncontrolled) development can rapidly kill innovation and agility. I’ve shared simple first steps to tame technical debt.
How to manage technical debt?
Technical debt can easily snowball into a problem that requires considerable resources to fix. To avoid this, below are some of the ways to effectively manage it. Monitor technical debt regularly. Keep an eye continuously on the second-order metrics that are directly impacted by technical debt.
Why is technical debt important?
Measuring technical debt is important for two main reasons: Tech debt decreases productivity. Technical debt is an ongoing tax on the cost of operating and extending a system. If you’re working on a system with a lot of technical debt, more time is spent on circumventing the debt than on innovating and advancing new product features. …
What happens if you have hundreds of engineers building in the cloud without clear visibility into how their technical decisions impact your answer
If you have hundreds of engineers building in the cloud without clear visibility into how their technical decisions impact your cloud spend, they may build products with high tech debt, leaving you with considerable cloud bills at the end of the day .
Is technical debt difficult to measure?
Technical debt is difficult to measure — there’s no single metric that could tell the full story. The solution is to measure the second-order effects of technical debt. Instead of measuring how many units of technical debt you have (which is impossible) you often have to look at its impact on other business metrics.
Does technical debt grow?
Tech debt grows if left unchecked. Unless you make a concerted effort to manage technical debt, it will undoubtedly grow. Over time, for the same amount of effort, you’ll achieve fewer outcomes for your business.
So, What Exactly Is Technical Debt?
What Are The Types of Technical Debt?
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For years, software development practitioners have sought ways to effectively classify and communicate technical debt. In 2007, Steve McConnell suggested that there are two types of technical debt: intentional and unintentional. According to him, intentional debt is technical debt that one takes on consciously as a strategic tool. This is in contrast to unintentional debt, which …
How Can Technical Debt Be Identified and Measured?
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Since all platform changes are a result of fulfilling business needs, it is important to be able to tie each solution to its ongoing need when identifying technical debt. To do this, it can be useful to ask the following questions.
About The Authors
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Ankit Garg is a Technical Architect at Salesforce and has 13 Salesforce certifications. He has more than 11 years of experience in designing and building enterprise applications on the Salesforce platform. He is passionate about solving business problems by creating technological strategies, and effectively communicating the architectural vision for a successful and sustaina…
The Costs of Technical Debt
Tackling Technical Debt
How to Use The Audit Template
Making The Most of Your Audit
Interested in Learning More?
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One of the services Candybox offers is an audit of your Salesforce org for a fixed fee. We can help dig into the nitty-gritty of your Salesforce instance and identify the key areas where you can add value, reduce costs and mitigate technical debt. Both young and mature Salesforce orgs can benefit from a tune-up and it’s often hard to find the time …