Technical Debt Management
Technical Debt Management is a software development practice that involves identifying, tracking, and addressing technical debt—the implied cost of additional rework caused by choosing an easy or quick solution now instead of a better approach that would take longer. It includes processes for assessing debt impact, prioritizing remediation, and integrating debt reduction into development workflows to maintain code quality and system maintainability over time.
Developers should learn and apply Technical Debt Management to prevent codebases from becoming unmaintainable, which can slow development velocity and increase bug rates. It is crucial in long-term projects, legacy systems, or when rapid prototyping leads to shortcuts that need later refinement, as it helps balance short-term delivery with long-term sustainability and reduces the risk of system failures or costly rewrites.