Calling all leaders in quality. This is for you.

Technical Debt

What is technical debt?

Technical debt in software development is mostly focused on non-optimised code but can also include things like out of date documentation. Quite often a product of time constraints, software is developed quickly to meet deadlines and opportunities to improve or refactor cannot or are not taken.

Technical debt can show up in the form of overly complex code due to adding more lines rather than integrating them. Duplicated functionality rather than a common method. A lack of unit or integration tests. Using older versions of components like libraries when new ones are available.

Technical debt going unaddressed for long periods of time can lead to product impacts like slow loading or processing times, security vulnerabilities and lack of support through outdated documentation or just a general lack of reliable information.

Ady Stokes

25th March 2025

Also known as "Tech Debt" in the context of Continuous Testing, Holistic Testing and DevOps. Tech debt is a metaphor for the engineering quality trade-offs developers, testers and business stakeholders make to meet schedules and customer expectations.

Types: There are various different types of tech debt, such as intentional vs. unintentional tech debt.

Intentional debt is taken on knowingly to meet deadlines.
Unintentional debt arises from poor practices, time constraints or lack of knowledge.

Morale impact: Tech debt can also affect the development team's morale and productivity. Working with a codebase that is difficult to maintain, or in a team where value being delivered is ignored, can be frustrating and demotivating.
Financial costs: Over time, tech debt can lead to increased costs due to the need for more extensive refactoring or even complete rewrites. This can impact the overall budget and financial planning of a project.
Examples of tech debt: hard-coded values, lack of the right level of documentation, no test automation frameworks or poor architecture decisions.
Strategies for managing tech debt: This should include ways to manage and reduce technical debt, such as regular code reviews, refactoring sessions, and adopting best practices, risk storming, shifting left and right where appropriate can make the domain or teams definition more actionable.

Aj Wilson

26th March 2025

Technical debt is the accumulation of inefficiencies in the development process. It happens when code, architecture, or dependencies become outdated, redundant, or too complex to maintain easily.

How does it creep in?

Created debt – When teams deliberately take shortcuts. Maybe they skip writing proper abstractions (removing unnecessary details to reduce complexity) to meet a deadline, or they write quick, hardcoded fixes (fixed responses that don’t change even if the software around them does) that create new bugs each sprint.
Inherited debt – When you adopt an existing project, and the architecture is a mess. The dependencies are outdated, the documentation is not up to date, and nobody knows what’s still relevant.
Lack of testability and test infrastructure – If testing isn’t built into the development process, technical debt accumulates quickly. Systems that are hard to test are often because the code is hard to change. Without reliable test coverage, developers hesitate to refactor, leading to brittle systems and risky deployments.

Technical debt isn’t just about messy code. It can include process debt, where inefficient workflows and decision-making structures slow teams down. You can read about process debt in detail here.

Technical debt is often a tradeoff between speed and sustainability. It’s fine to take on some debt when you need to move fast, just make sure you have a plan to pay it back.

Source: https://www.ministryoftesting.com/stec

Hanisha Arora

18th June 2025

Add Definition

MoT Professional Membership

For the advancement of software testing and quality engineering

Explore MoT

Xray AI in action: Test Case & Model Generation for modern QA teams

Wed, 17 Sep

with Ivan Fillipov, Solution Architect at Xray

MoT Software Testing Essentials Certificate

Boost your career in software testing with the MoT Software Testing Essentials Certificate. Learn essential skills, from basic testing techniques to advanced risk analysis, crafted by industry experts.

Leading with Quality

A one-day educational experience to help business lead with expanding quality engineering and testing practices.

This Week in Testing

Debrief the week in Testing via a community radio show hosted by Simon Tomes and members of the community