Untangling the Web

In the dim light of the office, long after most of the team had left, I found myself deep in conversation with my senior. We were hunched over a whiteboard, markers in hand, surrounded by a chaotic array of boxes and arrows that represented our project’s folder structure.

Months ago, we had enthusiastically crafted this structure, believing it was the blueprint for success. But as time passed, reality set in. Our once-promising structure had become a tangled web, tightly coupling components and making even the smallest changes a Herculean task.

I shared with my senior a story from my past — a project that had ground to a halt, paralysed by its own complexity. Stakeholders demanded new features, but the codebase was a labyrinth with no exit. The only solution was a complete overhaul.

Determined to avoid that fate, we decided to allocate time for tackling our technical debt. We carved out space in our schedules for refactoring, restructuring, and reimagining our architecture. It was an investment in our project’s future, ensuring that we wouldn’t become trapped in our own creation.

As we stepped back from the whiteboard, our new plan laid out before us, I felt a sense of clarity. This wasn’t just about cleaning up code; it was about learning from the past to build a sustainable future.

The moral of our story was clear: in the fast-paced world of tech, taking the time to address technical debt isn’t a luxury — it’s a necessity for innovation and growth.