Software development

Technical Debt

Technical debt refers to the future cost created by quick or imperfect technical choices made to move faster in the short term, which will eventually need to be fixed.

Why it matters

If left unmeasured and unmanaged, technical debt gradually slows down every new feature until it locks up a significant share of development capacity.

Concrete example

A team dedicates 20% of every sprint to paying down identified technical debt to avoid it silently accumulating.

Related notions

RefactoringCode qualityArchitectural debt

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