When we hear the phrase technical debt, the immediate image is often of a developer cutting corners—rushing a feature, skipping tests, or leaving “TODO” comments like breadcrumbs. But this view is both narrow and harmful. Technical debt is not just a developer’s mess to clean up. It is a team problem and, more importantly, a business problem.
What is technical debt anyway?
Technical debt refers to the cost of choosing an easy or quick solution now instead of a better approach that might take longer. Just like financial debt, it accrues interest: the longer it remains unpaid, the more it slows future development, introduces bugs, and hampers maintainability.
But unlike personal credit card accounts, technical debt is rarely created by one developer alone. It is often the result of collective decisions.
The root causes are often team-driven
Here are a few examples where technical debt originates from team or organizational dynamics:
- Rushed deadlines: stakeholders want a feature launched ASAP to hit a market window. Developers are pressured into compromising code quality to meet the deadline.
- Lack of documentation or shared standards: teams without clear architectural guidelines or code conventions create fragmented codebases.
- Culture of deferred maintenance: product and management teams prioritize new features over technical improvements.
- Siloed teams: If teams working on individual parts of a product are not aligned, poor integration choices accumulate and create friction.
It’s also a communication issue between “technical people” (e.g. engineering) and “non-technical people” (e.g. business): technical people should be able to explain in business terms why tackling technical debt is important. Business people should be able to understand how the product benefits in the long run from tackling technical debt.
When we treat it as a team issue, we create space for long-term thinking, smarter trade-offs, and ultimately, better products. Let’s stop pointing fingers and start fixing systems.