[51Cards]

This is where most of what 'debt' i manage comes from. We have a very large ecosystem of interconnected systems many of which have roots 15 years in the making. While the design decisions made back then were valid the expectations of our clients and industry have of course evolved. We're a small team and it's impossible to stop and rebuild the system so I try to manage it now by building services we can plug into the various systems. It helps reduce the scope of future debt and often allows updates without the stop and rewrite nightmare. Doesn't work for every case but it has helped and hopefully whomever I pass this on to will find it easier to manage.

[morog]

This sound very familiar, the software development company I work for uses at least 10 different platforms internally across Linux, Windows & Unix...SQL server, mysql & oracle dbs. 10yr old PHP customer support systems, 8 yr old jboss & tomcat servers with deserialization vulnerabilities at every turn, .NET V3 testing tools, mixed up with a sprinkling of modern platforms all talking to each other through rest, direct DB connections, microservices & a hearty dose of black magic. Management ignores vulnerability reports due to mostly non-technical backgrounds. Most documentation is at least 3yrs old, when 80% of dev team sacked & outsourced to India. Mostly keeping the lights on now during an acquisition...can't wait to debrief the new owners. Have acquired some great experience in investigating technical debt in the process which will hopefully be useful in the future.