Anything in any other business terms that needed to be used, created or maintained to create value for customers would not be debt. 'Technical debt' is just no

Anything in any other business terms that needed to be used, created or maintained to create value for customers would not be debt. 'Technical debt' is just not debt, it's just an interesting way to think about it, and a neat use of lingo. There are any number of other business practices for which one could try to apply the same analogy, but it wouldn't work because very quickly the term wouldn't seem right. For example 'training employees' for a situation, knowing they might need to be trained differently in the future, is not going to be regarded as debt. Same thing for processes, investment in equipment, parts, materials etc..