I really like how technical “debt” is similar to actual debt. You are borrowing speed today that you will have to pay back later with interest.
| Money Debt | Technical debt | |
|---|---|---|
| Allows you to move faster | Buy that house today instead of in 20 years. Buy a warehouse that you can’t afford in order to start your new business. | Cut corners to get a project in front of users faster to gather feedback and additional revenue. |
| You have to pay it back | Each month, you have to give the bank some money or they’ll take your house. | If you don’t address tech debt, you’ll see increases in bugs and decreased velocity. |
| It costs more to reimburse | You can’t just give the exact same amount of money back, there are interests. | Each new feature takes a bit more time than before due to added complexity and maintenance. |
| Left unchecked, it can be disastrous | Debt can spiral out of control and leave you bankrupt. It will destroy your credit score and no one will want to loan you money again. | Technical debt can make your project unmaintainable. You can end up unable to evolve your project. You’ll have trouble keeping good engineers and no one will want to join your team. |
| There are cases where you shouldn’t do it | You probably don’t need this $2,000 TV at 20% interest. Some deals are just bad and you shouldn’t consider them. | Not all technical tasks can be up for debate. You probably don’t want to skip testing before releasing that new payment system. |
| Limits your ability to seize new opportunities | If you are in too much debt without much liquidity, you won’t be able to invest when the market is low or grab that great one time deal. | If you are slowed down by technical debt, you will be slower to bring your new ideas to market, making you less competitive. |
Often people only see the “ship faster” part, but forget about the rest… just like they see how nice the new car will be while forgetting about the 8% interest.
So, use debt to your advantage only when relevant, keep it under control, appreciate what you did with it but make sure to pay it back in time!
Since you scrolled this far, you might be interested in some other things I wrote:
- All Projects Are Business Projects
- Agility vs Predictability: Water-Scrum-Fall
- Estimates as a Communication Tool
- Tracking Short Term Tasks With Notebooks
- Don't Automate Tasks Only Based On Time Spent
- Deadlines And Estimates In Startups
- Managing Your Project With Github Issues And HuBoard
- The Problem With Peak
- Startup & Tech Book Reviews