Modern Software Development - Debt Traps
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Key Learnings
- How does technical debt creep into software, and what debt trap awaits the project.
- What is UX debt, what interest do you pay for it, and how does the project get trapped.
- How does Dual-Track Agile contribute to keep software soft: evolvable, consistent, understandable - for users, developers, and the product trio.
Speakers
Speaker: Uwe Betzin
Profession: Head of UX
Workplace: generic AG
Description
Business software tends to have a long life cycle and is continuously extended. Many projects eventually stall: progress stops, dissatisfaction grows, costs rise, and nothing really moves forward. A complete rewrite seems like the only way out—expensive, and often no real improvement. Above all, it is not a sustainable use of limited resources. We show what it takes to make software development sustainable by tackling UX debt and technical debt together. Our contribution is based on current best practices from real projects, not abstract theory. For technical debt, we use Clean Code Development and show how we apply it in practice. UX debt, however, is still a less established concept. Using concrete examples, we outline which kinds of UX debt arise, what “interest” they generate, and which practices help to avoid or reduce them. Over the years, we have iterated our process for creating software from idea to product. We present these iterations and their impact on technical and UX debt, as well as on overall product quality. The session addresses everyone who shapes the development process: UX professionals, product people, and techies - all who want to avoid debt, understand its dynamics, and need to argue effectively for better conditions for their work and projects. Learn how to use terms like UX debt, interest, UX bugs, and debt traps to improve your projects.