technical-debt-assessment

name	technical-debt-assessment
description	Assess, quantify, and prioritize technical debt using code analysis, metrics, and impact analysis. Use when planning refactoring, evaluating codebases, or making architectural decisions.

Technical Debt Assessment

Table of Contents

• Overview
• When to Use
• Quick Start
• Reference Guides
• Best Practices

Overview

Systematically identify, measure, and manage technical debt to make informed decisions about code quality investments.

When to Use

• Legacy code evaluation
• Refactoring prioritization
• Sprint planning
• Code quality initiatives
• Acquisition due diligence
• Architectural decisions

Quick Start

Minimal working example:

interface DebtItem {
  id: string;
  title: string;
  description: string;
  category: "code" | "architecture" | "test" | "documentation" | "security";
  severity: "low" | "medium" | "high" | "critical";
  effort: number; // hours
  impact: number; // 1-10 scale
  interest: number; // cost per sprint if not fixed
}

class TechnicalDebtAssessment {
  private items: DebtItem[] = [];

  addDebtItem(item: DebtItem): void {
    this.items.push(item);
  }

  calculatePriority(item: DebtItem): number {
    const severityWeight = {
      low: 1,
      medium: 2,
      high: 3,
      critical: 4,
    };
// ... (see reference guides for full implementation)

Reference Guides

Detailed implementations in the references/ directory:

Guide	Contents
Technical Debt Calculator	Technical Debt Calculator
Code Quality Scanner	Code Quality Scanner

Best Practices

✅ DO

• Quantify debt impact
• Prioritize by ROI
• Track debt over time
• Include debt in sprints
• Document debt decisions
• Set quality gates

❌ DON'T

• Ignore technical debt
• Fix everything at once
• Skip impact analysis
• Make emotional decisions