Technical Debt
Etymology
A metaphor coined by programmer Ward Cunningham around 1992. Borrowing from finance, it frames quick-and-dirty work as a loan: shipping fast is borrowing, and the "interest" is the extra effort every future change costs until you pay it down. The image has spread well beyond code, to processes, documents, and habits.
noun phrase · /TEK-nih-kul det/
The accumulating future cost of choosing a quick, expedient fix now instead of a better but slower solution.
What it names
A finance metaphor for any corner-cutting that compounds: the hack you ship today charges interest tomorrow, and the concept lets teams (and people) name and budget for cleanup instead of pretending shortcuts are free.
Example
We hit the deadline, but the technical debt from those workarounds now doubles the time every new feature takes.
Related idea
Unlike the sunk cost fallacy, which is about past spending you can’t recover, technical debt is a live, growing future liability — and left unpaid it behaves like entropy, quietly raising the cost of order.