You're facing pushback from your team on technical debt reduction. How can you get them on board?

1 Understand Debt

To gain support for reducing technical debt, start by ensuring everyone understands what it is and how it affects your work. Technical debt refers to the extra development work that arises when code that is easy to implement in the short run is used instead of applying the best overall solution. Over time, this debt can accumulate, making the codebase harder to work with and slowing down future development. Explain the concept with clear examples from your current projects, highlighting how tackling this debt now can prevent a slowdown in the future.

2 Highlight Impact

Highlight the impact of technical debt on both daily operations and long-term project goals. Show how accumulated debt can lead to a decrease in system performance, increased bugs, and longer times for implementing new features. This can help your team see the invisible costs of not addressing technical debt, such as increased maintenance time, higher levels of frustration, and potential loss of business due to slower feature rollouts.

3 Encourage Ownership

Encouraging ownership among your team members is key. When individuals feel responsible for the quality of the codebase, they are more likely to support initiatives that aim to improve it. Foster a culture where quality is valued just as much as delivery speed. This can be achieved by recognizing and rewarding efforts to reduce technical debt, and by involving the team in decision-making processes about when and how to address it.