Terms of Trade · Edition 3: The technology proposal
Technical debt
Definition
The future cost of work that was done quickly rather than properly: the shortcut, the workaround, the integration nobody documented. It is real, it accrues interest in the form of every change that takes longer than it should, and it is also the most flexible word in a rebuild business case.
Field note
Technical debt is what your MVP leaves behind.
Board question
Show me the list, with a cost against each item, and tell me which three we would pay down if we were not replatforming.
Applied through
Should we replatform, because technical debt is the justification in most cases and the question is whether repaying it needs a new platform; Operational Excellence in the Cat’s Whiskers.
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