Perfectionists in a world of finite resources

The metaphor of "technical debt" is useful for reasoning about trading off software development activities: An exclusive focus on implementing functionality can lead to code decay. Since this deterioration of the system usually reflects a lack of activity spent on refactoring, documentation, and other aspects of the project infrastructure, it can be viewed as a kind of debt that the developers owe the system. Meaningful forms and indications of technical debt tend to be driven by project-specific quality concerns. Work with several organizations indicates that it is a healthy thing for projects to take a bit of time for reflection on what kinds of technical debt they are most concerned aboutand think of ways to keep an eye on how much debt is accumulating.