Technical

The Legacy Codebase

The developer quit. The repo is a mess. The new developer starts Monday. Read the code, find the debt, write the story.

mins Certificate included

See Plans Back to Courses

Course overview

About this course

The developer quit on Friday. The repo is a mess. The new developer starts Monday. You are the Product Owner — and everything Joel built lives in code only he understood.

Work through three code files, a half-finished handover document, and a database schema. Find the technical debt, identify what is missing, and write the story that will brief the incoming developer. The combination to unlock your access is hidden somewhere in the work Joel left behind.

What you'll learn

Practical outcomes

How to read code as a non-technical person using comments, function names, and flag markers.
What technical debt is, how it accumulates, and how to identify it.
The difference between code that works and code that is production-ready.
How to read a database schema to understand what is possible and what is missing.
How to write a user story from incomplete, real-world information.

Pre-requisites

What you should know first

Recommended: The Broken Backlog, or existing knowledge of user stories.
No coding experience required.

Ready to begin?

Start learning through real challenges

Work through interactive exercises, unlock the next steps as you progress, and earn a certificate on completion.

See Plans

Subscribe to Intermediate