Agile Software Development: Dealing with Legacy Code and Technical Debt

Course details

In nearly every organization, developers are forced to grapple with old code that gets in the way of writing new features. Is legacy code limiting your development team's agility? If so, let this course be your guide for how to embrace a legacy system and improve it while paying down technical debt. Instructor Scott Ford explains how to review legacy code and fence in the technical debt by creating and running a test suite. He also demonstrates how to introduce dependency management and update dependences and tools, how to remove noise and distractions from your code, and how to keep technical debt at bay by remaining test driven and monitoring code quality.

Learning objectives
Assessing the technical debt
Creating and running a test suite
Handling failing tests
Updating dependencies and tools
Paying down technical debt
Remaining test driven
Monitoring code quality

Concepts

Introduction

Embrace the legacy and tackle the debt
What you should know
Definitions

Getting Started - Review the Technical Debt

Familiarize yourself
Remember the prime directive
Take ownership
Set up a dev environment
Skim the code

Fence in the Technical Debt

Technical debt grows without tests
Create a test suite (if one is missing)
Run the test suite
Handle failing tests
Build out test coverage
Build dependency behavior tests

Improve Your Tools

Aging tools make technical debt worse
Introduce dependency management
Update dependencies and tools

Pay Down Technical Debt

Remove noise and distractions
Read by refactoring
Isolate external services and devices
Code like a scientist

Keep Technical Debt at Bay

Technical debt will grow like weeds
Stay test driven
Practice refactoring
Keep code clean
Monitor code quality

Conclusion

Next steps