I’ve been thinking lately about approaches to paying back technical debt, and I was introduced to an article that’s useful as one such approach.

■ What should you do to pay back technical debt? A. "Hire someone who is good at paying back technical debt and give them authority"

Really, this is it. I learned this after doing it for over 2 years straight.

Things like paying back debt in spare time while developing services can’t even begin to handle the amount of debt that accumulates over time. I think the only option is to hire someone with the overwhelming ability to tackle accumulated debt, or bring someone from somewhere in the organization and give them authority.

・Quote source: I gave a talk about Ruby and Rails at Rakuten TechTalk, What should you do to pay back technical debt? - HsbtDiary(2014-12-12)

When services and business have grown and there’s room to hire people other than service developers, it seems good to hire “someone who is good at paying back technical debt,” give them authority, and entrust them with the task. The only problem is that such talent barely exists in the market, so recruiting itself seems difficult.

That’s all from the Gemba.