Can we stop using the term Technical Debt? First objection: Managers and Business persons understand Debt, like it and use it. I use credit cards and have a ca

Can we stop using the term Technical Debt? First objection: Managers and Business persons understand Debt, like it and use it. I use credit cards and have a car loan. If we, as engineers, present the problem as "You can have what you want now, but you will incur Technical Debt" then any sane person will say "Sure! Good deal!" Ask yourself, how many times a manager or business owner has asked "What is the interest rate?" Zero times. Even if you really want to call it Debt, don't. Even if you could convince me that Debt really describes the problem, I would suggest that you don't use that term. You are using it because you want to better describe a problem and reach an understanding, and achieve a goal. However, the managers will listen to what you said, agree that it describes the problem, and the proceed to go in the exact opposite direction that you wanted. Calling it Debt does not achieve your goals. You can keep calling debt because it's oh so clever a phrase, but see where it gets you. Second Objection: It's not debt. Debt would be if someone said "I need to build a bridge across here that can handle an Army, and I've got $1m", we engineers reply "It will take $2m", and they respond "Ok, I will borrow $1m so you can build the bridge I need". Instead what happens is they say "Well, build what you can for $1m", and you say "Ok, we can make 'a bridge' for that", and then either (a) your infantry can cross, but the tanks have to get diverted 20 miles out of the way, or (b) the tanks end up in the river along with the bridge. Since (b) is bad, you then have to spend a lot of time planning the routes for the tanks, and making sure the tanks have the right air cover, etc etc, i.e. doing more work. More likely, however, is that the manager, who is not a structural engineer, sees a perfectly good bridge and orders the tanks across anyway, causing the loss of the bridge, the tanks, and the war. It's not debt. It's just (at best) an incomplete solution or (at worst) a bad solution that fails at the worst possible moment - e.g. database collapses during registration for the largest event of the year. Ah, but surely, if you build the lightweight solution for $1m, and acknowledge the increased costs of managing the problems that it doesn't solve, then thats fine? Sure, but that's not technical debt either! That is scoping: we (engineers + business) identify a workable solution that provides some business value. And then we do that well. When Cunningham, for example, talks about what to do about debt, e.g. YAGNI, these are all good ideas: scoping. But the term "debt" is incorrect in this case. The term "debt" will only ever get a team in trouble as it indicates that the team is unwilling to confront the actual problem as engineering, but only as a broken metaphor.