Technical debt isn’t just messy code

Technical debt includes slow feedback, fragile systems, and manual processes that hinder progress. Addressing it early with automation and testing reduces long-term costs.

Published on 13 March 2025

Written by Martin Hinshelwood

1 minute read

https://nkdagility.com/resources/81ZWio23ss7

Technical debt isn’t just messy code. It’s slow feedback, brittle systems, and manual processes that grind delivery to a halt. It’s why teams spend more time firefighting than innovating.

But here’s the thing: technical debt is a choice. Every time a team pushes off refactoring, skips automation, or accepts a fragile deployment process, they’re choosing to accumulate debt. And like financial debt, it compounds.

The only way out is to pay it down. Automate. Test early and often. Adopt trunk-based development. Remove friction from your pipelines. The cost of fixing it now is always less than the cost of delaying.

Also published on: LinkedIn

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