Untimely feedback as a root cause of tech debt

Have you ever worked on a brand new codebase with talented engineers, only to find out a year later that it turned into the same “archaeological strata of quick fixes” as your last legacy project? I know I have, and it happened many times. My go-to blame target for this was usually micromanagement and imposed unrealistic deadlines. And I’m sure these play a significant role in it. But a recent conversation led me to understand another cause of this – untimely feedback. Or, to be precise, feedback that was requested or given too late. I think many of us know the story. Someone starts working on a new capability. They spin off a feature branch and keep tinkering with it for a couple of days. Then they submit a PR. Thousands of lines, large diffs, the feeling of being overwhelmed and then the despair when you find a fundamental flaw in the design. The one that is not disqualifying, but one that would require a complete rewrite to do the thing correctly. From there, there are two options.…