{"head":{"title":"What Is Technical Debt? Definition and Examples | OceanLab","description":"Technical debt is the future cost of shortcuts taken in code today. Where it comes from, why its interest grows, an example and how teams keep it in check.","canonical":"https://oceanlab.in/glossary/technical-debt"},"crumbs":[{"name":"Home","path":"/"},{"name":"Glossary","path":"/glossary"},{"name":"technical debt","path":"/glossary/technical-debt"}],"slug":"technical-debt","term":"Technical debt","aka":["tech debt"],"category":"Buying software","short":"The future cost of shortcuts taken in code today.","body":[["Technical debt builds up when a team picks a quick solution over a cleaner one, or when code ages as the business changes around it. Copy-pasted logic, missing tests, an old framework version and a database design that no longer fits are all forms of it."],["Like money debt it has interest. Each later change takes longer, breaks more often and needs more testing. Some debt is a sensible trade, such as shipping an ",{"href":"/glossary/mvp","text":"MVP"}," fast to learn. The problem is debt nobody writes down or plans to pay back."]],"why":["Debt shows up as slower releases, more bugs and engineers afraid to touch parts of the system. It is a large part of ",{"href":"/glossary/total-cost-of-ownership","text":"total cost of ownership"}," that does not appear in the build quote. Knowing where it sits lets you decide what to fix, what to live with and what to rebuild."],"example":["A payments dashboard was built with each report querying the live database directly. It was fine with ten customers. With hundreds, reports slow the whole app down, and every new report makes it worse. Paying the debt means moving reports to a separate read store, which is a planned project rather than a hidden tax on every feature."],"inBuild":null,"mistakes":[["Calling every disliked piece of code debt. Debt is a cost you can point to, not a style preference."],["Planning a full rewrite to clear it. Paying it down in steps, alongside features, is usually safer."],["Keeping it invisible to the people who set budgets. If they cannot see it, it never gets time."]],"related":[{"href":"/glossary/total-cost-of-ownership","label":"Total cost of ownership (TCO)","detail":"Everything a piece of software costs over its life, not just the price to build or buy it."},{"href":"/glossary/mvp","label":"MVP (minimum viable product)","detail":"The smallest version of a product that real users can use, built to test whether the core idea works."},{"href":"/glossary/time-and-materials","label":"Time and materials (T&M)","detail":"A contract where you pay for the hours actually worked, at agreed rates."},{"href":"/glossary/fixed-price","label":"Fixed-price contract","detail":"A contract where the price for an agreed scope is set up front."}],"tools":[{"href":"/tools/software-maintenance-cost","label":"Software maintenance cost","detail":"Free tool"}],"links":[{"href":"/software","label":"Software by industry","detail":"Systems we build per industry, with guides and tools."},{"href":"/embedded-engineers","label":"Embedded engineers","detail":"OceanLab engineers working inside your team."}],"sources":[],"legal":false,"updatedAt":"2026-10-25"}