What is Technical debt?
Technical debt is the future cost of shortcuts taken in software today, such as quick fixes, outdated libraries or missing tests. Like financial debt, it is sometimes worth taking on, but it grows if it is never paid down.
Why it matters for your business
Unmanaged technical debt slows every new feature and raises the risk of outages. Paying it down in planned steps keeps a product fast to change.
A team spends one sprint in five upgrading old libraries and adding tests to fragile code, and new features ship faster in the months that follow.