What is 'technical debt'?
Options
- Money that is owed to cloud providers for unpaid usage
- Extra future work caused by choosing a quick or messy solution now (Correct option)
- The price of buying new computers for the whole team
- Unpaid software licenses that must be renewed this year
Answer
The extra future work caused by choosing a quick or messy solution now instead of a better one
Why
The metaphor: taking a shortcut is like borrowing money. You get speed now, but you pay interest later in the form of bugs, slow changes and confusing code.
Some debt is a conscious, reasonable choice (ship the MVP first). Debt that is never repaid slows the team more and more.
Refactoring and tests are the usual way to pay it back.
Remember
Technical debt = shortcut now, extra work later.