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The distinction between maintenance and Tech Debt comes down to whether the choice for an imperfect or expedient way of solving the problem was made consciously
by mrphoebs 6y ago
The distinction between maintenance and Tech Debt comes down to whether the choice for an imperfect or expedient way of solving the problem was made consciously. You incur Tech Debt consciously to deliver value in the short term at the cost of not being able to sustainably deliver that value as parameters change.
Maintenance on the other hand is stewardship of a system as both the system(entropic decay) and it's environment constantly change.
- megous 6y agoDunno. You can make conscious choices that will affect the maintenance burden in the future. So it's all blurry.
- spookylukey 6y agoI found Martin Fowler's "Technical Debt Quadrant" helpful on this - https://martinfowler.com/bliki/TechnicalDebtQuadrant.html https://martinfowler.com/bliki/TechnicalDebtQuadrant.html . He argues you can have deliberate and inadvertent debt, both of which can be wise or unwise - the debt metaphor still works.