What is technical debt? (Warning: Meta Question)

[MichaelMahlberg]

Actually the question is not really, what technical debt is ;-)
I reference the concept in Introduce Boy Scout Rule, Gernot references it in the introduction and long term goal.

How do we want to handle things like this?
Technical debt is a well known concept to some and has been wildly discussed - on the other hand it is also subject to a huge amount of semantic diffusion so it might be appropriate to have a section on the concept itself.

So here are the resulting questions:
a) (concrete) Do we want to have our own description of the concept technical debt?
b) (meta) If we would like to have such a description - where would we put it (and others like it)
c) (concrete) IF a.false() { which article(s) to link to? And where to put the links? }

Suggestions for c)

• http://www.infoq.com/news/2008/08/tech-debt-wkshp
• Ward Cunningham's video
• The c2 explanation
• Martin Fowler's interpretation
• All of the above ;-)

[vanto]

Can't agree more :) I also noticed that this is not there yet but I consider it one of the most important metaphors. I would even expand the question whether it makes sense to introduce the metaphor thoroughly and use the terminology throughout the document. So I tend to prefer a).

If c) applies for a.true() as well:
I'd add Steve McConnells presentation+video and this for the academics ;)

[gernotstarke]

imho TechnicalDebt is misused for "bad code" at loads of sites - especially the tool vendors.

As Tammo speaks about TecDebt at huge conferences, he can surely contribute a proper and well-balanced definition :-)

Links/references can be placed within the patter/practice/concept - but if they are of general interest, include them in bibliography.

[gernotstarke]

http://www.betterprojects.net/2015/01/technical-debt-systems-perspective.html

nice and current writeup of some interesting aspects

[gernotstarke]

include reference and parts of the argumentation of

http://reinertsenassociates.com/technical-debt-adding-math-metaphor/

Great post on technical debt and the problems we might have with this metaphor