Start Reducing Technical Debt with Stepsize

Stepsize is an editor-first issue tracker that helps Engineers maintain a healthy codebase and fight technical debt.

Let's take a look at how to:

• Set up Stepsize extensions & integrations
• Get visibility on technical debt by tracking it in your editor
• Collaborate with your team & prioritise technical issues

Getting started with Stepsize is easy. Follow these 3 simple steps to start addressing your technical issues and increase your team velocity.

Step 1. Set up Stepsize extensions & integrations

• Install the VS Code or the JetBrains editor extension.
• (optional) Integrate Stepsize with Jira to surface how debt might impact new features.
• (optional) Integrate Stepsize with GitHub to report debt during code reviews.
• (optional) Integrate Stepsize with Slack to send notifications.
  

Step 2. Get visibility on technical debt by tracking it in your editor

• Bookmark problematic code and create issues.

Select any piece of code, right click, choose Technical Debt > Create an Issue.

Describe the debt you're reporting and select the team responsible for it.

• View you key issues and filter them by priority.

By default, issues are sorted by priority. This makes it easy to see the top issues in your codebase and plan their resolution.

‍Step 3. Collaborate with your team to prioritise issues and start addressing them

• Invite your colleagues to Stepsize by sharing an invite link, sending an email invitation, or verifying your domain.
• Ask your colleagues to vote on the importance of each issue.

To set up priority or vote on the issue, click on the issue to open it in the web app or in your editor.

📌 Note that the same prioritisation features are available in your editor.

• When you find issues that have the biggest impact, create a task to work on them by sending it to your issue tracker, e.g. JIRA.
• Discuss the top issues at your next sprint planning.

💡 Quick tip: when you talk about technical issues with your stakeholders try focusing on the business impact of the problems, e.g. talk about velocity, security, or how reducing technical debt will impact customer satisfaction.

• Dive into the code and mark it as resolved when the issue is fixed.
  

Done! You’re one step closer to reducing technical debt, having a healthy codebase, happy engineers and customers!

Need help onboarding your team? Book a chat with our expert.