Words are for communication, not being correct. It is good to have different words for the same concept if someone has some difficulty processing your words - b

Words are for communication, not being correct. It is good to have different words for the same concept if someone has some difficulty processing your words - be it understanding or emotional response. Technical debt is fine for talking to other technical people, we've all learned what you mean. And of course you can break it down by urgency, block percentage, etc. Maintenance Load sounds good for communicating to the people with the money, it explains why you're doing things they didn't ask you to do; and of course they can easily say no, just like we do in real life to infrastructure maintainers.