What is technical debt?

Technical debt, often likened to financial debt in concept, is a term used in software development to describe the cost of additional rework caused by choosing an easy (quick and dirty) solution now instead of using a better approach that would take longer. Technical debt can accumulate in projects when development teams take shortcuts in the coding or design process to hit short-term goals or deadlines at the cost of making the code harder to maintain or extend in the future. As with financial debt, technical debt incurs interest in the form of the extra effort required to maintain and modify the codebase, and if not managed properly, it can accumulate to a point where it significantly hampers the project’s progress or even leads to its failure.

It’s important to manage technical debt carefully; deliberate, well-managed technical debt can be a strategic tool to hit important market windows or validate concepts before investing in a more robust solution. However, unchecked technical debt can spiral and lead to reduced code quality, increased bugs, a decrease in developer productivity, and eventually, project challenges or failures. Addressing technical debt often requires refactoring the affected parts of the codebase, which involves re-structuring and improving the internal code without changing its external behavior, to improve maintainability and reduce future costs.