Refactoring Techniques to Reduce Technical Debt

Three Benefits of Refactoring

Refactoring directly reduces both current and future technical debt. Teams often create technical debt when they prioritize meeting deadlines, address scope creep, or struggle with unfamiliarity in the existing codebase.

Benefit 1: Simplifying Code

One of the goals of a refactoring project is to simplify the code structure and improve readability. Hastily written code may not follow best practices, leading to unwieldy methods and classes, unnecessary code, and duplicated functions. These messy components are updated during refactoring to streamline the structure and eliminate bloat.

Benefit 2: Developers understand the code better

Developers often know where they’ve had to rush to complete a feature or fix but may have blind spots around code written by former and current coworkers. Refactoring work permits developers to examine the code holistically to simplify and improve how the code works. As a result, they have a deeper understanding of how the code works when they begin work on the next new feature. This knowledge decreases the chances that the developer will add technical debt by duplicating code or not following the company’s code standards.

Benefit 3: Improved Maintenance and Reliability

Simplifying the code structure and updating dirty code to follow standards improves readability. These improvements help developers integrate new code more quickly and identify errors or bugs more efficiently. Senior developers benefit from this when designing future projects, and it also aids in onboarding new hires.

Five Risks of Not Refactoring

Skipping code refactoring can lead to several risks that negatively impact a project over time:

Risk 1: Increased Technical Debt

Non-refactored code often accumulates inefficiencies and complexities, making future development slower and more expensive.

Risk 2: Reduced Code Quality

Over time, code becomes harder to understand and maintain, leading to bugs and errors during updates or feature additions.

Risk 3: Poor Scalability

Non-refactored code may not handle growing demands well, causing performance issues as the application scales.

Risk 4: Team Productivity Loss

Developers spend more time deciphering and working around messy code, reducing overall efficiency.

Risk 5: Higher Maintenance Costs

Due to a lack of a clean and optimized codebase, fixing bugs or adding features becomes more time-consuming and costly.

Prioritizing regular refactoring helps mitigate these risks, ensuring a more maintainable, scalable, and robust software product.

When Should You Refactor?

Most teams consider refactoring to be an activity that occurs after the code has shipped. That’s the primary time code is refactored, particularly for legacy code. An ounce of prevention goes a long way, and teams should consider code reviews as an opportunity to refactor code before it goes live.

Refactoring existing code can be done as a special project, when the architecture needs significant work, or as ongoing smaller projects between updates and new features.

We recommend establishing a regular process to review and refactor code before it becomes too entrenched, preventing the accumulation of additional technical debt caused by or built on top of complicated code.