8 Pattern 7: Continuous attention to technical excellence

Many organisations operate information technology departments as ‘feature factories’, with the emphasis placed on maximising the rate of feature delivery. A lower priority is placed on technical excellence practices, with the result that shortcuts taken to expedite feature delivery fail to be resolved – building up ‘technical debt’. Technical debt accumulates over time, and, if not repaid, it makes change harder, slower and more costly to achieve. Stakeholders with an interest in continually improving platforms should actively support continual investment in the technical underpinnings of the platforms themselves to reduce the long-term cost of change.