The Boy Scouts have a rule: “Leave the campground cleaner than you found it.” You should apply the same principle to your code. Regular refactoring prevents code rot by keeping the code base clean and easy to maintain. Refactoring activities can be added to the product backlog as user stories to make it a discipline.

Reports that the Equifax breach took advantage of a known issue in Apache Struts set the stage for a conversation about technical debt, product value, and risk management. Steve Berczuk shares his thoughts on how to help prioritize technical work in a way that balances short and long term value.

Once a testable requirement or acceptance criteria have been “created,” there is a tendency to assume that the task can be considered completed. Because that may or may not be true, it is better to continue to pay attention to testability. Here are four ways to maintain testable requirements.