Technical Debt — Measuring, Managing, Paying Down
Understand the types of technical debt, learn frameworks for quantifying and prioritizing it, and develop strategies for paying it down without stopping feature development.
Ward Cunningham coined the term "technical debt" in 1992 as a metaphor: shipping code that is not quite right is like borrowing money. The debt is manageable as long as you pay it back promptly through refactoring. If you do not, the interest compounds — every future change takes longer and is more error-prone.
Three decades later, technical debt is the most discussed and least managed problem in software engineering. Teams talk about it constantly, but few have a systematic approach to measuring, prioritizing, and reducing it. This lesson provides that framework.
What Technical Debt Actually Is
Technical debt is the implied cost of future rework caused by choosing a faster or easier solution now instead of a better approach that would take longer. Like financial debt, it has a prin
This lesson is part of the Guild Member curriculum. Plans start at $29/mo.