Technical debt

Cutting corners now means more work down the road - but Steve Cassidy asks whether that's always a bad thing

- Steve Cassidy

Let me guess – another aspect of the cost-of-living crisis?

You could be forgiven for thinking so, and rising business costs are certainly a problem. But that’s not what “technical debt”means; in fact, it’s one of those neat insider concepts that everyone can benefit from understanding. Simply put, it’s a software development-oriented expression of the fact that every decision comes with a cost.

So it just means we need to stay on top of our IT expenditure?

Not quite – perhaps talking about costs is misleading. Technical debt isn’t about money, at least not directly. It’s more to dowith the fact that every project plan involves constraints of time and resources, whichmean that compromisesmust often bemade along the way.

If you’re saying projects tend to go over budget, I already know that...

That is sort of what I’m saying – but again, it’s not aboutmoney. Technical debt is a debt of time or effort, which represents all the work you might need to do in the future because, for whatever reason, you took a simpler, quicker route today.

Is this something that boils down to lazy developers, then?