> One of the hardest challenges of paying off technical debt is that there's no visible improvement to the stakeholder. From a business perspective, they often

> One of the hardest challenges of paying off technical debt is that there's no visible improvement to the stakeholder. From a business perspective, they often think it's working now, why not leave it alone? I think the article somewhat addresses this where it talks about not needing to pay off debt in areas where it doesn't need to be changed, so perhaps it's a valid argument that if it's "working now" to leave it alone. As for the hard challenge of when to pay off (or accrue) technical debt, it really comes down to individual judgements from an experienced technical leader who has a high level and long term frame of reference. The focus should ultimately be on optimizing delivering overall value to the company or mission. One thing to avoid is to have non technical managers making decisions about technical debt, since it will likely be an uninformed decision.