What is Technical Debt?
Companies often accrue technical debt. Sometimes they are unaware, or are, intentionally or not, willing to accept the consequences. The term technical debt refers to choosing a faster/cheaper solution to an IT problem, over a better long-term solution. Originally used by programmers, the term is also used to refer to any inferior, outdated, or incorrectly used technology. The implication is that one "accrues interest" by not staying up to date, thus requiring extra time or money in the future.
One example could be a company which chooses to not replace computers running Windows 10. These are likely 8+ years old already. Next month they will stop receiving security updates, unless the company pays for extended support. Besides the ever-increasing risk of failures of old hardware, they will be easier to compromise by viruses and ransomware. All of these raise the risk of downtime and lost data. In the meantime, unproductive employees work on slow PCs.
Another could be simply not backing up servers or important PCs. Hard drives fail, power supplies fail, and if the company server is offline or months of data are lost, staff are much less productive.
A third example might be buying a server or PC and then looking at the needs of the company or the software program's requirements. Sure the PC was in service quickly but it may not meet the actual requirements.
Choosing to use a spreadsheet instead of an actual database may work well for initial data entry, but a spreadsheet will not scale to tens of thousands of records and complex relational data lookups.
Technical debt can be intentional or unintentional. Intentional debt, often dictated at the company level, prioritizes quick solutions or fast software release dates. Unintentional debt could be the result of a poor system design process, missed/ineffective code reviews, or perhaps ignorance of current security standards.
September 2025
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