technical debt

English

Etymology

Coined by Ward Cunningham in 1992.

Noun

technical debt (countable and uncountable, plural technical debts)

1. (software engineering) The implied cost of additional future work caused by choosing an easy but inferior solution originally.

   Synonyms: design debt, code debt

   • 2012, Kenneth S. Rubin, Essential Scrum, Addison-Wesley, →ISBN, page 142:

     An important attribute of technical debt is that it grows in an unpredictable, nonlinear fashion. Each bit of technical debt, when added to the pool of existing technical debt, might do significantly more harm than the size of that new debt might imply.

Translations

implied cost of additional future work

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 技術債務／技术债务, 技術負債／技术负债, 技術債／技术债