# What is Technical Debt?

> What is technical debt in software development? Learn what causes it, how it impacts your app, and strategies to manage and reduce technical debt.

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Quick Answer

**Technical debt is the accumulated cost of shortcuts, quick fixes, and suboptimal decisions in a codebase that make future development slower and more expensive. Like financial debt, it compounds over time if not addressed.**

**Technical debt** is a metaphor coined by Ward Cunningham in 1992. It describes what happens when development teams take shortcuts to deliver faster: code that works but is harder to maintain, extend, or debug. Like financial debt, technical debt accumulates interest: every future change takes longer and costs more because developers must work around the shortcuts.

## Types of Technical Debt

**Deliberate debt** is chosen consciously. A team might ship a simpler implementation to meet a deadline, planning to refactor later. This is reasonable when the trade-off is understood and scheduled.

**Accidental debt** accumulates without awareness. Poor coding practices, lack of code reviews, missing tests, and outdated dependencies all create debt that compounds silently.

**Bit rot** happens when previously clean code degrades as requirements change and patches accumulate. Even well-built systems develop debt over time without active maintenance.

## How Technical Debt Impacts Your Business

Technical debt can consume a large share of an engineering team’s capacity. Symptoms include slow feature delivery, frequent bugs, difficulty onboarding new developers, brittle code that breaks when changes are made, and escalating maintenance costs.

The compound effect is significant: a codebase with heavy technical debt can take far longer to add new features compared to a clean codebase.

## Managing Technical Debt

The key strategies are: **allocate time for refactoring** (a fixed share of each sprint), **write automated tests** to catch regressions, **conduct code reviews** to prevent new debt, **track and prioritize** known debt items, and **upgrade dependencies** regularly rather than letting them fall years behind.

## Technical Debt at App369

At [App369](https://app369.com), we build clean, well-tested code from the start to minimize debt. For clients with existing applications, our [maintenance service](https://app369.com/service/ongoing-maintenance/) and [consulting services](https://app369.com/service/consultations/) include technical debt assessment and remediation. [Contact us](https://app369.com/contact/) to discuss your codebase.

## **Related Terms **

[what is agile development](https://app369.com/glossary/what-is-agile-development/) [what is mvp](https://app369.com/glossary/what-is-mvp/) [what is devops](https://app369.com/glossary/what-is-devops/)

## **Related Services **

[ongoing maintenance](https://app369.com/service/ongoing-maintenance/) [consultations](https://app369.com/service/consultations/)

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