<story><title>The True Meaning of Technical Debt (2020)</title><url>https://refactoring.fm/p/the-true-meaning-of-technical-debt</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>travisjungroth</author><text>&amp;gt; Weird phrases that we often mock, such as &amp;quot;action item&amp;quot;, or &amp;quot;circling back&amp;quot;, are actually highly efficient vectors of meaning. They fit non trivial concepts in very few words, and are understood by everybody.&lt;p&gt;I hold the opposite belief. Management speak is meant to obfuscate. Instead of just telling a report who disagrees with your decision based on expected outcome to think the way you tell them to, just say &amp;quot;think outside of the box&amp;quot;. When you commit to &amp;quot;circling back&amp;quot;, you&amp;#x27;re committing to nothing but having this idea cross the manager&amp;#x27;s mind at some point in the future.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s weird that this is the conclusion the author came to from their linked article, considering this is in it:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; This is why you might be tempted to use the readily accessible management metaphor laced language which you’re familiar with. Don’t.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Technical Debt&amp;quot; is this level of crummy metaphor. I love Cunningham&amp;#x27;s original definition. Do your best to model the business problem with the understanding you have. Later, pay down that debt by refactoring.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s not what it means anymore. Tech debt means whatever the speaker wants it to mean. It&amp;#x27;s a get out of jail free card for any bad software choice.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;That choice will severely limit our capabilities in the future, and be incredibly hard to change.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;m willing to take on some tech debt to prioritize shipping.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;See? No need to think.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jerf</author><text>All those phrases originally meant something. I think they become management speak via two mechanisms: 1. People use them shorn of their original meaning to deliver the appearance of being managerial without the substances or 2. People raise them to rock-solid rules and demand slavish conformance to them without thought about costs&amp;#x2F;benefits or appropriateness.&lt;p&gt;For bonus points, mix the two up, so that not only is someone trying to sound managerial but failing by using the terms completely incorrectly, but then also rigidly enforce their incorrect understandings.&lt;p&gt;For instance, if you have lots of meetings and those meetings almost never produce &amp;quot;action items&amp;quot;, and&amp;#x2F;or those action items never get done, you really do have a problem. If you don&amp;#x27;t like calling them action items, fine, find another word, but it&amp;#x27;ll be the same thing. But if you get a manager that insists that meetings &lt;i&gt;always&lt;/i&gt; produce action items, no matter what, you get another sort of failure. It is a perfectly valid use of a meeting to get two groups together and just make sure they are on the same page about something. If that&amp;#x27;s all you ever meet about, there may be a deeper problem you should dig into, this shouldn&amp;#x27;t be your dominant form of meeting (unless you&amp;#x27;re in a position where that&amp;#x27;s your direct job), but it does sometimes need to happen.&lt;p&gt;I find it useful to dig down to the &amp;quot;original&amp;quot; meaning of a lot of these terms, think about what they mean and how to use them in my own head to put terminology on things, but not to be rigid about it.&lt;p&gt;I also observe that there are some managers who use the terms essentially correctly, and some that clearly fit into at least one of the two categories I listed at the beginning. They should be treated differently.</text></comment>
<story><title>The True Meaning of Technical Debt (2020)</title><url>https://refactoring.fm/p/the-true-meaning-of-technical-debt</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>travisjungroth</author><text>&amp;gt; Weird phrases that we often mock, such as &amp;quot;action item&amp;quot;, or &amp;quot;circling back&amp;quot;, are actually highly efficient vectors of meaning. They fit non trivial concepts in very few words, and are understood by everybody.&lt;p&gt;I hold the opposite belief. Management speak is meant to obfuscate. Instead of just telling a report who disagrees with your decision based on expected outcome to think the way you tell them to, just say &amp;quot;think outside of the box&amp;quot;. When you commit to &amp;quot;circling back&amp;quot;, you&amp;#x27;re committing to nothing but having this idea cross the manager&amp;#x27;s mind at some point in the future.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s weird that this is the conclusion the author came to from their linked article, considering this is in it:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; This is why you might be tempted to use the readily accessible management metaphor laced language which you’re familiar with. Don’t.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Technical Debt&amp;quot; is this level of crummy metaphor. I love Cunningham&amp;#x27;s original definition. Do your best to model the business problem with the understanding you have. Later, pay down that debt by refactoring.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s not what it means anymore. Tech debt means whatever the speaker wants it to mean. It&amp;#x27;s a get out of jail free card for any bad software choice.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;That choice will severely limit our capabilities in the future, and be incredibly hard to change.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;m willing to take on some tech debt to prioritize shipping.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;See? No need to think.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>snarf21</author><text>I agree with you but I think there is something to the business side. No Sales&amp;#x2F;PjM&amp;#x2F;Manager&amp;#x2F;CFO is likely to want to spend 3 months of resources on non-revenue generating updates. They would rather pay the fiddler when the system has a failure. Just like us humans, people don&amp;#x27;t change their diet and exercise until &lt;i&gt;AFTER&lt;/i&gt; the heart attack.</text></comment>