Technical-debt

A term that you need to know as a non-technology founder building a technology business is “technical debt”.

Now I need to explain this without going to deep. But it is really important that you know that this is because accruing technical debt is UNAVOIDABLE, and without a process in place to manage it, over the medium to long term in your business, technical debt will overwhelm you and can cause either a sort of “technical bankruptcy”, but depending on the situation can cause an “actual commercial bankruptcy”.

Technical debt is a kind of “waste product” that comes out of any software development process, e.g. building your MVP. It’s unavoidable, and in a short post like this one I can’t go into too much detail as to where it comes from.

As a founder, you need to know two things. A) Developers usually don’t admit technical debt exists. And B) non-technical managers usually don’t appreciate how dangerous accruing technical debt can be. So what I’m saying here is a) technical debt always exists, and b) you need to create a specific process to “pay down” technical debt.

12/Nov/2023