Technical Debt

Technical debt is not a mistake but a deliberate choice to ship minimally functional code so you can get real feedback quickly. The article argues that releasing imperfect code that works as expected, even if you don't yet know all the details, is essential for agile teams.

Holub compares debt to a credit card: you incur it when you ship, then you must pay it off each month by refactoring based on what you learned. If you ignore the debt, interest builds up and the code becomes hard to work on, slowing the whole organization.

He stresses that debt is distinct from bugs-bugs are code that behaves incorrectly, debt is code that behaves correctly but is based on incomplete knowledge. He cites Nokia's collapse as a cautionary tale of unpaid debt that made build times days long and killed agility.

For technical leaders the takeaway is clear: accept debt as a normal part of development, schedule regular refactoring, and weigh the cost of keeping debt against other priorities. Treat it like a known liability, not sloppy code, and you keep the team moving fast.