THE HIDDEN COSTS OF TECHNICAL DEBT
The term “technical debt” first arose in the domain of software development. It was coined by Ward Cunningham, one of the pioneers of software development and a co-creator of the Agile Manifesto, in the early 1990s. Cunningham used the metaphor of technical debt to describe the long-term costs of taking shortcuts in software design and development. These shortcuts might lead to faster delivery in the short-term but accumulate “debt” that must be “paid back” through refactoring, debugging, or rewriting code in the future. Just like financial debt, technical debt incurs “interest” over time in the form of increased maintenance costs, complexity and potential issues that can hinder future development. The hidden costs of technical debt in the world of software [...]