ReferenceGlossary
Tech debt
Shortcuts and outdated design in code that make each later change slower or riskier, like interest on a loan, until the team repays the debt by refactoring. Ward Cunningham coined the metaphor in 1992. Some debt is a deliberate tradeoff to ship sooner; its cost is the extra effort it adds to every later change.
Team
In Quorum#
Each Service has a tech debt percentage. Every shipped Feature adds 6 points under Move fast, 3 under Balanced, and 1 under Quality, plus 1 with no framework, and a task shipped during an Incident adds 2. Debt cuts velocity by up to half, raises the bad-deploy chance up to 3 times, and makes every Incident likelier. The Refactor task (10 Dev Hours) removes 20 points, and the Quality policy pays some down by itself.