Tech, Product & Agile Jargon · Vice President level

"Tech debt"

"Tech debt" means shortcuts or compromises made in code or systems that will require extra work to fix properly at a later date.

Say this instead: cleanup owed later

How "Tech debt" shows up at work

The term makes a useful point: fast decisions compound into future costs, just like financial debt. In practice it covers everything from a missing test to a ten-year-old system nobody understands, and it's often cited in roadmap conversations as a reason to do less.

Buzzword

We'll need to address the tech debt in the payments module before we scale.

Plain English

We'll need to address the cleanup owed later in the payments module before we scale.

Corporate Rank: Vice President · Category: Tech, Product & Agile Jargon

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