Technical Debt

Technical debt accumulates when teams defer proper design, documentation, testing, or retirement decisions to meet short-term deadlines. It manifests as fragile integrations, unsupported software, and manual workarounds that slow future change. Architecture governance should track accepted debt with remediation plans and owners.

In Practice

Larkinized LLC quantifies debt in heatmaps and portfolio reviews alongside feature delivery. ARB exception records capture debt accepted and sunset criteria. Transformation roadmaps allocate capacity explicitly for debt reduction—not only new capabilities.

Example

Expedient point-to-point integrations create debt scheduled for retirement via an enterprise event bus work package.