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A nice clean way to describe the ramifications of the decisions we have to make every day.  Also, a way to describe to our bosses (in term$ they understand) why doing something quick-and-dirty may bite us in the ass.

"Technical Debt is a wonderful metaphor developed by Ward Cunningham to help us think about this problem. In this metaphor, doing things the quick and dirty way sets us up with a technical debt, which is similar to a financial debt. Like a financial debt, the technical debt incurs interest payments, which come in the form of the extra effort that we have to do in future development because of the quick and dirty design choice. We can choose to continue paying the interest, or we can pay down the principal by refactoring the quick and dirty design into the better design. Although it costs to pay down the principal, we gain by reduced interest payments in the future" [Martin's Bliki]