DZone
Thanks for visiting DZone today,
Edit Profile
  • Manage Email Subscriptions
  • How to Post to DZone
  • Article Submission Guidelines
Sign Out View Profile
  • Post an Article
  • Manage My Drafts
Over 2 million developers have joined DZone.
Log In / Join
Refcards Trend Reports
Events Video Library
Over 2 million developers have joined DZone. Join Today! Thanks for visiting DZone today,
Edit Profile Manage Email Subscriptions Moderation Admin Console How to Post to DZone Article Submission Guidelines
View Profile
Sign Out
Refcards
Trend Reports
Events
View Events Video Library
Zones
Culture and Methodologies Agile Career Development Methodologies Team Management
Data Engineering AI/ML Big Data Data Databases IoT
Software Design and Architecture Cloud Architecture Containers Integration Microservices Performance Security
Coding Frameworks Java JavaScript Languages Tools
Testing, Deployment, and Maintenance Deployment DevOps and CI/CD Maintenance Monitoring and Observability Testing, Tools, and Frameworks
Culture and Methodologies
Agile Career Development Methodologies Team Management
Data Engineering
AI/ML Big Data Data Databases IoT
Software Design and Architecture
Cloud Architecture Containers Integration Microservices Performance Security
Coding
Frameworks Java JavaScript Languages Tools
Testing, Deployment, and Maintenance
Deployment DevOps and CI/CD Maintenance Monitoring and Observability Testing, Tools, and Frameworks

Modern Digital Website Security: Prepare to face any form of malicious web activity and enable your sites to optimally serve your customers.

Containers Trend Report: Explore the current state of containers, containerization strategies, and modernizing architecture.

Low-Code Development: Learn the concepts of low code, features + use cases for professional devs, and the low-code implementation process.

E-Commerce Development Essentials: Considering starting or working on an e-commerce business? Learn how to create a backend that scales.

Related

  • Legacy Code Refactoring: Tips, Steps, and Best Practices
  • Continuous Testing in the Era of Microservices and Serverless Architectures
  • Evolving From Performance Testing to Modern Engineering
  • Top 11 Project Management Hacks for Software Project Managers

Trending

  • The Future of Java: Virtual Threads in JDK 21 and Their Impact
  • Navigating NoSQL: A Pragmatic Approach for Java Developers
  • Agile Testing: Blending Shift-Left, Automation, and Collaborative Testing Strategies
  • Unlocking the Power of Streaming: Effortlessly Upload Gigabytes to AWS S3 With Node.js
  1. DZone
  2. Testing, Deployment, and Maintenance
  3. Maintenance
  4. Functional Debt vs Technical Debt in Software Development

Functional Debt vs Technical Debt in Software Development

Just like in finance, in the development process debt is not really something you want. Learn about tech debt, and get your team back in the green.

Roman Predein user avatar by
Roman Predein
·
Nov. 30, 17 · Opinion
Like (7)
Save
Tweet
Share
9.2K Views

Join the DZone community and get the full member experience.

Join For Free

Probably every person who has ever been involved in software development is familiar with the term Technical Debt. It is a brilliant metaphor that was brought from the financial world and that represents the behavior of code maintenance and scalability over time. I would like to talk today about software debt, including both functional debt and technical debt. 

Technical Debt 

Whenever you are forced to leave some parts of your code with a ‘To Do,’ ‘Refactor,’ or ‘Review Later’ mark, it’s an additional piece of debt you acquire. This way you buy yourself some time. You meet the deadline, you launch the product on time, and you have a prototype to show for an investment round. But you can’t forget about the cutbacks made in code quality because it’s your debt. It’s something you owe, it’s something you need to pay back. 

If you ignore it and continue to build upon it, your product will progressively become less stable and less scalable and its maintenance cost will skyrocket. To keep the analogy with the real world, it’s like taking a new loan to pay back the one you took earlier, repeatedly.

At first, things seem to work fine. But as the loan grows to cover the interests and other expenses, it’s like a rolling snowball that you just can’t stop. This is why it is important to allocate the needed time to refactor and even sometimes to rebuild the marked parts of your code.

Even though we are very familiar with this situation, we’ve found a workaround to achieve both the Time (deliver on time) and avoid the Technical Debt. But as a result, in the very end, we get a new form of debt. Something I like to call Functional Debt.

Functional Debt

I did some research on this idea and I found just a few references to this phenomenon, and to be honest, it was never the way I personally see it. In this article by Mark Barnes, it is described as the unfulfillment of the YAGNI principle. This is when we choose a very heavy and powerful framework for what should be a ‘lightweight’ and small project. When the functionality we offer overpasses the functionality we need, the development and maintenance of those extras becomes Functional Debt. 

When I picture Functional Debt, it’s not exactly what I think about. The way I see it is that in order to deliver it on time, the functionality is only partially implemented. The functionality itself suffers from cutbacks. Let’s say that we need to deliver a simple form with a few fields and file input. As we are tight on time and we don’t want to introduce Technical Debt, we decide to ‘simplify’ the functionality. We eliminate the ‘drag and drop’ for the file attachment, support for multiple files, and the fields’ verifications on the legitimacy of the introduced data. 

Our application works perfectly fine, the code is clean (the parts that are present don’t need to be modified), and we deliver it on time. It is a miracle. Well, it’s not. By doing this, we keep invalid data in our database and the user experience is not good enough. Our code is spotless and does exactly what we expect. We don’t have Technical Debt. Our debt is Functional.

Later on, we will have to come back to this form, and add new parts, integrate a validation service, and change the UI. As time passes, the development team will no longer recall exactly what is missing. They will need time to study what has to be done, and they will need to deal with the toxic data that we allowed in our database. The time invested here is much higher than the time needed to implement the full functionality in the first place. It’s the fee we pay, the pay off of our debt. Its effects are less harmful than the Technical Debt’s effects, yet they still need to be watched and taken care off.

In Apiumhub we believe, that the developer that exposes situations like the one described above is often seen as the enemy of productivity as he asks for time to work on something that is already working. It is beneficial to stop for a moment and think about the possible Functional Debt we might be creating, as it might save us a headache or two.

Software development tech debt

Published at DZone with permission of Roman Predein. See the original article here.

Opinions expressed by DZone contributors are their own.

Related

  • Legacy Code Refactoring: Tips, Steps, and Best Practices
  • Continuous Testing in the Era of Microservices and Serverless Architectures
  • Evolving From Performance Testing to Modern Engineering
  • Top 11 Project Management Hacks for Software Project Managers

Comments

Partner Resources

X

ABOUT US

  • About DZone
  • Send feedback
  • Careers
  • Sitemap

ADVERTISE

  • Advertise with DZone

CONTRIBUTE ON DZONE

  • Article Submission Guidelines
  • Become a Contributor
  • Core Program
  • Visit the Writers' Zone

LEGAL

  • Terms of Service
  • Privacy Policy

CONTACT US

  • 3343 Perimeter Hill Drive
  • Suite 100
  • Nashville, TN 37211
  • support@dzone.com

Let's be friends: