Rethinking Technical Debt

Technical debt is often likened to a credit card 💳: borrow now, pay back later.

The key notion is that tech debt is something you eventually pay back.

But here's the catch: it's rarely repaid. 😮‍💨

Imagine a poorly managed country endlessly borrowing until bankruptcy.

That's the true nature of tech debt.

It's not about a team incurring debt today and settling it tomorrow - it's not a time-based thing.

👉 It's much deeper - it's about culture.

There are teams with a 'tech debt culture' and those without.

Teams steeped in tech debt culture often find themselves in a relentless cycle of borrowing, leading to a downward spiral in quality and efficiency. (See my earlier repost today for a more eloquent description of this).

On the other hand, teams focused on excellence and quality demonstrate their commitment through robust engineering practices. They don't just pay lip service to quality; they embed it in their technical work.

So, perhaps it's time to rebrand 'Tech Debt'.

Instead of saying:

"To deliver this feature quickly, we'll incur some tech debt."

... we should be honest about the implications:

"To meet this deadline, we're adding irreversible bottlenecks to our system."

Generative AI Image: "Rube Goldberg Machine with Credit Cards" representing technical debt. ☺️