How do you avoid Technical Debt while still keep true to Agile, i.e.: avoiding violation of YAGNI and avoiding BDUF? [closed]

Question

Technical Debt via Martin Fowler, via Steve McConnell

YAGNI (You Ain't Gonna Need It) via Wikipedia

BDUF (Big Design Up Front) via Wikipedia

UPDATE: To clarify the question, I think I can also state it this way and keep my meaning:

"In what ways do you, as an Agile practioner, find the right balance between "quick and dirty" (unintentionally risking Technical Debt while attempting to adhere to YAGNI) and over-engineering (BDUF) within each iteration?"

Answer 1

It seems that if you stick with the "plan, do, adapt; plan, do, adapt" idea of agile (iterations, iteration reviews) you would avoid those things by default. BDUF is just so contrary to the idea of agile estimating & planning that if you are really agile, you wont be BDUF automatically.

The purpose of release & iteration planning meetings is to make sure you are adding the most valuable features to the project for that iteration. If you keep that in mind, you'll avoid YAGNI for free.

I would very strongly recommend the Mike Cohn books on agile planning:

1. User Stories Applied
2. Agile Estimating and Planning

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Update: After your clarification about avoiding YAGNI and BDUF within an iteration...

BDUF...If I felt a feature was not clearly defined before I started work on it, I would create a small "feature" or story to account for the design type portion of the work needed. So that maybe the smaller story has a story point estimate of 1 instead of the real feature's 5. That way, the design is time-boxed into the smaller story, and you will be driven to move on to the feature itself.

To avoid violating YAGNI I would work to be very clear about what the customer expects for a feature within an iteration. Only do work that maps to what the customer expects. If you think something extra should be added, create a new feature for it, and add it to the backlog of work to be done. You would then persuade the customer to see the benefit of it; just as the customer would push for a feature being done at a certain point in time.