To summarize many comments: A debt is something that gave you value in the past. If nobody ever got value out of it (in comparison to an equally feasible debt-

To summarize many comments: A debt is something that gave you value in the past. If nobody ever got value out of it (in comparison to an equally feasible debt-less solution), then it was just a mistake, not a debt. A debt is something you pay an ongoing interest on. If your proposed solution to the technical debt is not provably reducing the ongoing costs, then you're not actually addressing a technical debt.