The primary source of our technical debt is launch impatience. Specifically, that most stakeholders in a feature or project accept "mostly works, with the exce

The primary source of our technical debt is launch impatience. Specifically, that most stakeholders in a feature or project accept "mostly works, with the exception of rare edge cases" as sufficient cause for launch. This usually takes the form of "get it out the door as-is so we can promote it, and then refactor later". This is actually somewhat reasonable in terms of balancing business and technical interests, and I can see the case being made for doing it. The problem, of course, is that "refactor later" never happens because there is always another project or feature demanding to be worked on. These same stakeholders might allow a day or two after launch to refactor, but then promptly decide that starting on Project B takes higher priority than refactoring Project A (which, in their mind, "works"). The above scenario covers at least 95% of our existing technical debt.