A Simple Guide to Managing Technical Debt in Your iOS Team
Hello Everyone,
I would like to share some thoughts from my recent learning and experience on a topic that has an impact on us as iOS Developer and a product team in general
Let’s dive right in:
Technical debt is like a disorganized workspace. Finding the tools and papers you need gets more challenging and time-consuming over time, even though at first you might not notice much of a difference. Similarly, with iOS development, ignoring technical debt can result in a disordered codebase that affects future development and maintenance efforts — which eventually has an overall negative effect on users’ experience of the app leading to sometimes poor ratings on the app store or even uninstallation rates going high.
So, how can your iOS team handle it effectively? Let’s break it down into easy steps I recommend.
1. Prioritize major issues:
Assume your iOS app crashes frequently, negatively impacting the user experience. Instead of focusing on new features, you should prioritize bug fixes because they are vital to the app’s performance and user satisfaction — Previous experience on how users interact with existing features has an overall effect on the minds of users when there is a new feature on the app.
2. Start off slowly:
Imagine that the codebase for your app has a significant amount of technical debt in terms of the documentation and quality of the code. Instead of aiming to rewrite the entire codebase in a single sprint leaving out other development processes, you should devote a portion of each sprint to gradually refactoring and improving certain parts of the code while also planning to do a rewrite at a slower pace. This will help not to leave users frustrated on the current app since the development process could take longer when it comes to rewriting due. to unexpected issues that might come up.
3. Utilize Tools:
Using a code analysis tool, you may quickly find coding patterns that go against best practices. This tool for example detects instances in your app when memory (Instruments- Xcode built-in tool) is not correctly managed or warning on a portion of your code base(like swiftlint), allowing your team to proactively resolve memory leaks or inconsistencies in patterns before they become serious concerns.
4. Keep Learning:
Your team should regularly attend Apple developers conferences like WWDC and workshops to stay updated with the latest advancements. By learning about newer improvements when it’s introduced, you can avoid creating technical debt caused by using older UI frameworks or libraries.
5. Collaborate:
You should collaborate closely with the design team to ensure that their designs are compatible with iOS development’s capabilities and limits. This collaboration helps to avoid design-related technical debt, such as implementing UI components that are difficult to create or maintain — in essence, the product and engineering team should not work in isolation.
6. Evaluate and Improve:
Your team should hold a retrospective meeting after finishing a big feature. You can for example learn that poor documentation led to misunderstandings and delays in the previous development process. As a result, you make the decision to improve your documentation standards for future projects.
7. Strike a balance between innovation and maintenance:
While it’s tempting to add new features all the time, when you notice that the app’s performance is deteriorating due to technical debt, in order to maintain the app’s stability and dependability(user satisfaction) — you should balance innovation and maintenance by allocating a portion of your development efforts to technical debt reduction.
To summarize, managing technical debt in your iOS team is an ongoing process I must say but by following these simple measures, you can keep it from becoming a burden, ensuring that your iOS applications remain efficient and high-quality. Begin today to keep your iOS development team on track!
To manage product development effectively, we must recognize that valuable new information is constantly arriving throughout the development cycle. Rather than remaining frozen in time, locked to our original plan, we must learn to make good economic choices using this emerging information. — Donald G. Reinertsen
Have a great week
