Expert knowledge for digital decisions
What is Technical Debt?
Short answer
Where It Comes From
- Time pressure: "Just do it this way for now, clean up later"
- Requirements that have changed without the structure being updated
- Missing tests that make cleanup risky
- Dependencies that have not been updated
Not all technical debt is a mistake. Delivering something quickly before a trade show can be economically justified.
How It Manifests
- Small changes take unexpectedly long
- Something breaks elsewhere with every adjustment
- New developers take a long time to onboard
- Updates are postponed because they are risky
When you hear "this has grown historically", that is the technical term for it.
How to Manage It
Make It Visible. Cleanup tasks should be on the same list as new features, not in a separate folder that no one reads.
Repay Continuously. A fixed percentage of each time period – for example, every tenth task – should go to cleanup. This prevents large renovations.
Schedule Updates. Dependencies become outdated regardless of whether you are working on the system.
The Point of No Return
When a small change costs more than the original construction of the affected part, the debt exceeds the value. Then renovation is worthwhile – and in rare cases, a complete rebuild.
Key facts
- Image
- Like a loan – with interest on every change
- Management
- Make it visible and repay continuously