Really strange. What industry have you seen this in.
In big tech, enterprise, biotech, every team I’ve been on has uniformly understood that technical debt is just a concept of future work that is intentionally put off to focus speed, exploration or some other reason. It’s used in strategic planning to determine the cadence of output.
Aside from new grads this has never been a concept I’ve had to explain to an engineer or pm. Not like a sometimes thing. Literally never. Just very strange.
Think of the term “debt” here. For example, when you can borrow at a good rate and use the funds to gain an advantage.
If you don’t know what you owe it’s not a problem with the debt, but with your accounting. Personally, I would not trust an accountant who couldn’t keep track of what the company owed.
Identified tech debt goes into the backlog and other relevant documentation however your team handles it. You don’t need specifics, just the knowledge that you’re making the decision.
Now, if most of your tech debt is unidentified, that’s not a problem of the tech debt, but rather of engineering accounting practice.
On some teams, the backlog is just a way to track tech debt. Backlogs have a habit of growing indefinitely making it so lower priority tasks never get done.
Eithet way, tech debt is generally a bad thing. You’re just weighing it against other tasks, which are almost always more important.
It is only ever a negative. It’s just that sometimes some other factor is worse, maybe time-to-market is far more important in some case.
Really strange. What industry have you seen this in.
In big tech, enterprise, biotech, every team I’ve been on has uniformly understood that technical debt is just a concept of future work that is intentionally put off to focus speed, exploration or some other reason. It’s used in strategic planning to determine the cadence of output.
Aside from new grads this has never been a concept I’ve had to explain to an engineer or pm. Not like a sometimes thing. Literally never. Just very strange.
You’re describing a backlog.
Debt is the stuff that never gets if the backlog.
Think of the term “debt” here. For example, when you can borrow at a good rate and use the funds to gain an advantage.
If you don’t know what you owe it’s not a problem with the debt, but with your accounting. Personally, I would not trust an accountant who couldn’t keep track of what the company owed.
Identified tech debt goes into the backlog and other relevant documentation however your team handles it. You don’t need specifics, just the knowledge that you’re making the decision.
Now, if most of your tech debt is unidentified, that’s not a problem of the tech debt, but rather of engineering accounting practice.
On some teams, the backlog is just a way to track tech debt. Backlogs have a habit of growing indefinitely making it so lower priority tasks never get done.
Eithet way, tech debt is generally a bad thing. You’re just weighing it against other tasks, which are almost always more important.