Suppose an opportunity comes up, but the technical debt in your software makes it exceedingly hard to respond to it. Either you still respond to it (with an obv

Suppose an opportunity comes up, but the technical debt in your software makes it exceedingly hard to respond to it. Either you still respond to it (with an obvious high cost), or you let the opportunity pass (and you "pay" the opportunity cost). So in a sense you can be forced to pay back your technical debt, if you include the "cost" of missed opportunities. But you are right that you always have the choice between those two, unlike real debt. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost