In some cases, taking on technical debt can be a strategic choice to meet immediate goals, such as delivering a proof-of-concept or a quick release.
However, failure to prioritize and address the debt can result in reduced maintainability, increased development costs, and risks to production systems.
[4][5] Technical debt encompasses various design and implementation decisions that may optimize for the short term at the expense of future adaptability and maintainability.
It has been defined as "a collection of design or implementation constructs that make future changes more costly or impossible," primarily impacting internal system qualities such as maintainability and evolvability.
Manny's Law states that: "As an evolving program is continually changed, its complexity, reflecting deteriorating structure, increases unless work is done to maintain or reduce it.
Development slowdown and workforce impact: Failing to address technical debt leads to declining productivity and slower feature delivery.
This leads to stressed systems with inconsistent design, causing users to suffer from degraded performance and limited functionality, while developers struggle to maintain quality.
While often valid, this premise relies on key assumptions that may not always hold: Given the uncertainty of the future, what appears to be technical debt today may ultimately prove to be a savings.