CDA Technical Debt & Refactoring Strategies 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: In DA, which governance mechanism helps teams balance new feature work against technical debt repayment each iteration?
- Hardening sprints
- Capacity allocation (e.g., 20% of capacity to debt) (Correct answer)
- Feature freeze periods
- Parallel development teams
Correct answer: Capacity allocation (e.g., 20% of capacity to debt)
Reserving a fixed percentage of team capacity each iteration for debt items ensures ongoing debt reduction alongside feature delivery.
Question 2: A DA practitioner encounters 'reckless technical debt.' What distinguishes this from deliberate debt?
- It is documented in the backlog
- It is incurred without awareness or a remediation plan (Correct answer)
- It is approved by the product owner
- It is fixed in the next sprint
Correct answer: It is incurred without awareness or a remediation plan
Reckless debt is taken on without understanding the consequences or planning to address it, making it the most harmful type.
Question 3: Which refactoring technique is most appropriate when a DA team finds that a single class has grown to handle too many responsibilities?
- Extract Method
- Extract Class (Correct answer)
- Inline Variable
- Replace Conditional with Polymorphism
Correct answer: Extract Class
Extract Class splits an overloaded class into two focused classes, each with a single responsibility.
Question 4: According to DA, what role does the architecture owner play in managing technical debt?
- They approve all user story points
- They guide technical direction and ensure architectural debt is visible and addressed (Correct answer)
- They write production code exclusively
- They manage the team's daily standups
Correct answer: They guide technical direction and ensure architectural debt is visible and addressed
The architecture owner in DA is responsible for ensuring the technical vision is sound and that architectural debt is tracked and reduced.
Question 5: A DA team wants to visualize their technical debt alongside feature work. Which tool best supports this?
- Gantt chart
- A shared backlog with debt items tagged and visible to stakeholders (Correct answer)
- Separate debt-only tracking system hidden from stakeholders
- Time-box schedules
Correct answer: A shared backlog with debt items tagged and visible to stakeholders
Making debt items visible in the main backlog enables stakeholders to make informed trade-off decisions about priority.
Question 6: In Disciplined Agile, 'technical excellence' is listed as a DA principle. How does this principle relate to technical debt?
- It permits shortcuts to maximize feature output
- It drives teams to maintain code quality standards that minimize debt creation (Correct answer)
- It applies only to enterprise-level organizations
- It focuses solely on documentation quality
Correct answer: It drives teams to maintain code quality standards that minimize debt creation
Commitment to technical excellence means teams build quality in, which prevents debt from accumulating over time.
Question 7: A team is performing 'preparatory refactoring' before adding a new feature. What is their goal?
- To delay the feature to the next sprint
- To restructure existing code so the new feature can be added more easily and safely (Correct answer)
- To delete unused features before writing new ones
- To update the sprint backlog with new items
Correct answer: To restructure existing code so the new feature can be added more easily and safely
Preparatory refactoring makes the codebase receptive to the upcoming change, reducing the cost and risk of the new feature.
CDA Technical Debt & Refactoring Strategies 3
In DA, which governance mechanism helps teams balance new feature work against technical debt repayment each iteration?