Boat Anchor

The anti-pattern is about codes that serves no purpose. This is often seen in all levels, especially when integrating new technologies without a risk mitigation strategy and removal plan.

Consequences

• Bloated (but not scalable) project.
• Confusing tech components.

Symptoms

• When requirements does not factor in "useless" product risk.
• Code base contains "obsolete" comments or partitions.

Causes

• Immature requirements like new risky technology integration or assimilation.
• Unplanned / bad planning for development and release strategy related to new integration/assimilation.
• Bad technical backup and version control.

Fixing Recipes

1. Check the requirements again. Perform a process review to prevent such event from happening again.
2. Plan for deprecation and removal schedules and implementation.
3. Implement deprecation notices.
4. On scheduled time, remove them via a refactor efforts.