Devoxx Greece 2024 - Socio-Technical Smells: How Technical Problems Cause Organizational Friction

Discover how technical problems can cause organizational friction and learn how to identify and prioritize code quality issues.

Key takeaways

Technical problems can cause organizational friction, making it harder to onboard new team members.
Code quality issues amplify organizational problems, leading to increased costs and delays.
Change coupling is problematic when it violates architectural principles, making it difficult to spot overall patterns in the code.
Cohesion is crucial: a lack of cohesion in code can lead to increased coordination, slower development, and higher cognitive load.
Gut clauses, which centralize behavior, can become congested and difficult to change, making it hard to onboard new team members.
The track factor, or the number of people needed to understand a codebase, is important: React has a track factor of 2 people, while Vue has a much higher track factor of 4-7 people.
Behavioral code analysis can help identify technical debt and prioritize improvements.
Code changes for a reason, and software architecture should make these changes easy to implement.
Non-trivial programs often have many dependencies, making it important to prioritize improvements to unhealthy code with a lower track factor.
External dependencies, such as third-party libraries, can also increase the risk of technical debt and complexity.
Shotgun surgery, or trying to fix multiple problems at once, can be expensive and ineffective.
The people side of code is important: getting this wrong can kill projects, and neglecting to onboard new team members can lead to increased coordination and slower development.

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