Great piece as always, Quentin. I love the way you have taken the metaphor of Technical Debt and applied it more broadly. I think this is highly applicable. However, I have a different view of Technical Debt. I believe it is a failure of communication, a misunderstood message, a phone call from a ship, where parts of the message are garbled. If you permit, I’ve written about it here http://markgreville.ie/2021/07/23/technical-debt-is-not-debt-its-not-even-technical/
Good piece. We're not so far apart; you point out that technical debt is a subset of a company wide phenomenon, and thus not technical, I believe it's a phenomenon first pointed out it a technical area, but one that generalizes.
In that sense, it's sort of like extremely nuanced arguments being called "theological." The term may have originated in theology, but it's applicable elsewhere.
A friend elsewhere had a different, and amusing, response to this piece: "Technical debt is another term for 'customers.'"
Thank you for reading. Your point is a good one, TD was diagnosed in tech, but applicable elsewhere, and I agree with that.
However I’m not sure the definition of the term is agreed on anywhere. Technology suffers from a litany of loose definitions and folk knowledge. It’s one reason why applying AI to tech implementations will be more difficult than people realise.
Holy cow, I learned a lot from this one. Had to come back and read it again when I had a minute. Gotta ask my own millennial software developer son about Technical Debt.
Great piece as always, Quentin. I love the way you have taken the metaphor of Technical Debt and applied it more broadly. I think this is highly applicable. However, I have a different view of Technical Debt. I believe it is a failure of communication, a misunderstood message, a phone call from a ship, where parts of the message are garbled. If you permit, I’ve written about it here http://markgreville.ie/2021/07/23/technical-debt-is-not-debt-its-not-even-technical/
Good piece. We're not so far apart; you point out that technical debt is a subset of a company wide phenomenon, and thus not technical, I believe it's a phenomenon first pointed out it a technical area, but one that generalizes.
In that sense, it's sort of like extremely nuanced arguments being called "theological." The term may have originated in theology, but it's applicable elsewhere.
A friend elsewhere had a different, and amusing, response to this piece: "Technical debt is another term for 'customers.'"
Thank you for reading. Your point is a good one, TD was diagnosed in tech, but applicable elsewhere, and I agree with that.
However I’m not sure the definition of the term is agreed on anywhere. Technology suffers from a litany of loose definitions and folk knowledge. It’s one reason why applying AI to tech implementations will be more difficult than people realise.
Holy cow, I learned a lot from this one. Had to come back and read it again when I had a minute. Gotta ask my own millennial software developer son about Technical Debt.
The family that engages in discussion of world-historical technology resonant fates together, relates together.