Support our tools research
Get (free) technical debt insights
Why we do it
— For free? Are you serious? — Yes, we are serious. Here is why.
There are many tools designed to help with technical debt management. They gather data from source code repositories, CI/CD tools, change management tools, technical discussion forums, etc., to provide insights about risks and inefficiencies in code, architecture, team layout, and production pipeline. Visit our tools landscape page for more information.
It is critical for us to master these tools and keep our knowledge current if we are to provide quality advice on technical debt. For this, reading documentation only goes so far. We need to actually use them in real life cases. This is where you come in…
We realize that enabling us to use your project as a test platform requires some effort on your end. We keep it to a minimum and do our best to ensure that the value you get from our research outweighs the impact on your team.
How it works
1. Preparation
We agree on the research scope in terms of tested tools, integration with your software pipeline tools, software components, and timeframe.
We have a call so we can understand your code base, infrastructure, and engineering process
You setup the necessary accounts and permissions for us to be able to configure integration with your tools
2. Execution
For each tool in scope, we
- Create a trial subscription
- Setup the tool by connecting it to your code repositories, change management systems and CI/CD pipelines
- Generate technical debt insights
- Present the results to your team
- Uninstall/cancel the tool trial unless told otherwise
Bottom line
Your cost
- 2 to 8 hours of your team’s time for initial information sharing and setup
- technical support for the duration of the test. This can be time-boxed,
Your benefits
- in-depth cost/benefit analysis of each tested tool for your particular situation
- tool setup already done should you decide to keep using one or more tested tool for future use
- initial set of findings produced by each tested tool. These findings may inform future engineering priorities or design decisions. The impact of such decisions is usually not measured in hours, but rather in weeks or months of engineering time.