←  All terms
T
QA & Deployment

Technical Debt

Technical debt is the future cost and risk created by short-term technical shortcuts or outdated solutions.

Technical debt accumulates when short-term technical decisions create additional work, complexity, or risk for future maintenance and development. Common causes include temporary fixes, outdated dependencies, and code that becomes increasingly difficult to extend or replace. Regular refactoring, clear standards, and deliberate prioritization help keep technical debt manageable over time. The concept is closely related to Custom Code and Legacy System.

Read more

Custom Code

Legacy System

Quality Assurance

Design System

FAQ

Technical Debt

How are technical debt and custom code connected?
Custom code enlarges the maintenance surface: every bespoke solution must be maintained, tested, and updated. Without standards and documentation, it becomes a source of debt. It is not problematic per se; used deliberately where standard features fall short, the debt stays manageable.
When should technical debt be paid down?
When it noticeably burdens delivery, security, or cost: before a major extension, for security-relevant updates, or when the same component keeps causing incidents. A fixed share of capacity per cycle works better than rare big clean-ups. Priority follows risk and change frequency.
How can technical debt be identified and measured?
Qualitatively: changes take longer than before, bugs pile up, knowledge sits with individuals, updates get avoided. Code reviews, dependency checks, and a register of known debt with estimated effort help as well. There is no single reliable metric. Such signals should be discussed with the team regularly.
Is technical debt always bad?
No. Deliberate debt can make sense, for example to hit a deadline or run a market test, provided it is documented and comes with a repayment plan. Unnoticed or ignored debt is what does harm. As with loans, interest decides: how much extra effort does each change cost while the debt remains?
How does technical debt arise in web projects?
Through time pressure, unclear requirements, missing tests, and decisions that only fit the short term: copy-paste, workarounds, dependencies that never get updated. Deliberate shortcuts count as well, such as a launch date taking priority over cleanliness. It turns critical when repayment is never scheduled.