Technical debt is a metaphorical concept that is commonly used in software development to describe the accumulated cost of making trade-offs between short-term gains and long-term costs. It refers to the idea that every decision made during the software development process can either save time and money now or cost more time and money in the future.
Technical debt arises when a development team makes a deliberate decision to use an approach that will save time in the short term, but will also create problems and additional work in the long term. Examples of such approaches include the use of quick-and-dirty coding techniques, ignoring code quality standards, and avoiding software testing.
Just like financial debt, technical debt has its interest payments. The longer you wait, the higher the cost of paying off the interest. Over time, technical debt can accumulate and create significant problems for a software project. This can include slower development times, reduced reliability, decreased performance, and increased maintenance costs.
The term "technical debt" was coined by Ward Cunningham, one of the pioneers of the agile software development movement. He observed that the short-term gains of taking shortcuts or delaying necessary work can create significant costs in the long term. To manage technical debt, many software development teams use tools such as code refactoring, automated testing, continuous integration, and continuous delivery to improve the quality of the code and reduce the potential for technical debt to accumulate.