Codebase Understanding

No single person can hold a large codebase in their head. A knowledge graph externalizes understanding into a queryable structure. Here's the 4-week GRAPH playbook to build one.

Code search is more important than code quality. A team that can't find code can't fix it. Here's the search infrastructure stack by team size and the FIND audit for measuring search effectiveness.

Codebases don't become unmaintainable because of bad code. They decay through 5 specific mechanisms: dependency creep, abstraction erosion, knowledge concentration, test brittleness, and configuration explosion.

80% of documentation teams write should never have been created. Here's the WRITE system for building documentation that survives: proximity to code, append-only ADRs, and CI-enforced accuracy.

Context switching costs 31% of coding time, and the biggest source isn't meetings. It's inconsistent codebases. Here's the COST audit framework and 4 structural fixes that cut switching costs by 52%.

The monorepo vs polyrepo debate misses the most important factor: how quickly engineers understand the code they need to change. Here's a framework that measures understanding impact directly.

A repeatable quarterly process for measuring codebase health using the VITAL Signs Framework. Covers velocity, incidents, test effectiveness, architecture, and legacy burden with real metrics and thresholds.

Your codebase has dependencies you don't know about. Here's how to map them all and find the ones that will break your next deploy.

Developers spend 58% of their time reading code but zero hours learning how. Here's the systematic approach I wish I'd learned in school.

Strong code ownership reduces bugs by 30% but can create knowledge silos. Here's the ownership model that gets both right.

Your bus factor is 1. You just don't know it yet. Here's how to extract and preserve critical knowledge before it walks out the door.

Stop drawing architecture diagrams that are outdated before the ink dries. Here's how to generate visualizations from your actual code.

Most codebase complexity isn't inherent to the problem. It's self-inflicted. Here are the 7 patterns that make code unnecessarily hard to read.

ADRs are the only documentation I've seen engineers voluntarily read. Here's the exact format and process that works.

Cyclomatic complexity is overrated. Here's what 15 years of research says about which metrics actually predict defects.

Most companies lose $50K+ per hire during the onboarding gap. Here's why it takes 6 months and how to cut it to 6 weeks.