[davesims]

Been thinking about this a lot lately, and I think one of the problems is the language and metaphors we use to describe the quality of the code.

Words like 'clean', 'elegant', 'well-structured', even SOLID are qualities of objects we want to consider at a distance, like statues or paintings. They are words of repose and reflection. You know: business death.

Here's an example from this essay:

"There is a reason good code is considered to be a form of poetry. It's elegant, clean, easy to read, and fun to write. These are all exceptional qualities that we should strive for every single day."

Try telling a product manager or CEO or other stakeholder how 'clean', 'easy to read', or -- God forbid -- "fun!" your code is, and watch their eyes roll back in their head. (I exaggerate for effect.)

These ideas make sense to us as developers because that's what we spend our entire day doing: considering, reflecting and thinking about code. But I think what we should be talking about is the inherent speed of the codebase. I'm not talking about my velocity as a developer, or the velocity of the team and how many story points they deliver per sprint, but the inherent velocity of the codebase as a function of its technical debt. Codebases, from a business standpoint, should not be "clean" or "dirty", but rather "fast" or "slow".

Technical debt should be surfaced to the stakeholders using language that conveys the dollar value, the fiscal liability, of technical debt. The most accurate way to describe that and show how debt is slowing your team down, is to talk about its inherent speed.

"Our codebase is getting slower" makes business sense to a Product Manager. "Refactoring this will make our codebase faster" is a phrase that conveys the worth of initiatives that otherwise seem to have no immediate effect on the bottom line.

All of the tools and agile methods we have talk about velocity in terms of what a team is delivering, and can parse that down to the sprint and developer level. But in my experience, the most significant contributor to a team's relative speed is the (intertia|speed|velocity|momentum) of the codebase itself, as a function of its technical debt. I think we need to start using language that intuitively and constantly surfaces the dollar value of technical debt to the stakeholders, so that "just ship it!" no longer sounds like a sound business strategy.

[lifexkills]

This is a great idea. Thanks for sharing.

It's definitely much easier to convince people when you're talking dollars rather than "beauty" or "maintainability" which are much more abstract concepts. This pushes that to the forefront.

I wonder if anyone has experience with trying to use this language that they can share. I'm curious because it seems like a great idea. But I wonder if it would solve the "just ship it!" mentality. I still feel like there may be a missing component which is that what might be fast to build now will slow down the overall development effort later on. I think that time gap is one of the big things that stakeholders fail to think about. They're thinking "what can we get out the door now?" and not further down to what impact that will have on getting other things out the door a few months from now.

Great post!

[davesims]

Yeah I'm trying to get my head into how this would come about. It would be along the lines of how agile thought leaders shifted the notion of 'man hours' to 'story points', or how we stopped measuring LOC as a feature of productivity.

But there would have to be some cultural and language support for an entire idea around what a codebase is. The idea that it is an object that can possess the property of velocity will take a bit of enculturation. But the software/agile community has done it before, so...

[jdlshore]

"Codebases, from a busines standpoint, should not be 'clean' or 'dirty', but rather 'fast' or 'slow'."

This is pure brilliance. I can't express how much I love this idea.

[davesims]

Thanks! The more I think in this direction the more I think we need to really push this language or something like it. As much as I love the idea of 'craftsmanship', etc., when business stakeholders hear that language and similar ideas, fear grips their heart. We can do a better job creating awareness of the dollar value of bad code by changing the way we describe it in a credible way.