# TechDebt.fail

> Practical, no-nonsense guidance for developers and engineering leaders on measuring, communicating, prioritizing, and eliminating technical debt. Built from a real-world software engineering and leadership career that began in 1991.

TechDebt.fail covers technical debt for two audiences: developers who need strategies and talking points to raise red flags, and tech leaders who need ROI justification and ways to deliver value while paying down debt. Content is free to read and reference.

## Core Concepts

- [What Is Tech Debt?](https://techdebt.fail/what-is-tech-debt/): Definition, origins, and why technical debt matters.
- [Types of Tech Debt](https://techdebt.fail/types-of-tech-debt/): A complete taxonomy of 12 debt categories with severity ratings.
- [Why Reduce It](https://techdebt.fail/why-reduce-it/): The business case - velocity, incidents, and cost of delay.
- [Measuring Tech Debt](https://techdebt.fail/measuring-tech-debt/): Metrics and frameworks for quantifying debt.
- [Glossary](https://techdebt.fail/glossary/): Key technical debt terms defined.
- [Internationalization and Localization Debt](https://techdebt.fail/i18n-debt/): Hardcoded strings, plural rules, text expansion, RTL layout, and encoding debt.
- [Conway's Law and Organizational Debt](https://techdebt.fail/organizational-debt/): How team boundaries become system boundaries - Team Topologies, cognitive load, and SPACE.
- [Software Capitalization and Tech Debt](https://techdebt.fail/capitalizing-tech-debt/): ASC 350-40, IAS 38, and why the accounting quietly favors a rewrite over a refactor.
- [Technical Debt Research and Citations](https://techdebt.fail/research-and-citations/): The verified bibliography behind this site, plus the sourcing policy.
- [Public Software Failure Postmortems](https://techdebt.fail/postmortems/): Real documented failures traced to SEC filings, GAO reports, and published root cause analyses.
- [EU AI Act, CRA, and NIS2 Debt Impact](https://techdebt.fail/global-regulation-debt/): How EU compliance deadlines turn existing debt into dated engineering work.
- [Data Platform and Warehouse Debt](https://techdebt.fail/data-platform-debt/): Model sprawl, semantic drift, warehouse cost, and untrustworthy analytics.
- [Serverless, Edge, and WASM Debt](https://techdebt.fail/serverless-edge-debt/): Cold starts, function sprawl, lock-in, and metered inefficiency.
- [Embedded, Firmware, and OT Debt](https://techdebt.fail/embedded-firmware-debt/): Why debt turns permanent when there is no rollback and no update path.
- [Low-Code, SaaS Config, and ERP Debt](https://techdebt.fail/low-code-config-debt/): Configuration is code, but with no version control, review, or owner.
- [Open Source and Maintainer Debt](https://techdebt.fail/open-source-maintainer-debt/): Single-maintainer dependency risk, project health, and publisher duties.
- [Green Software and Carbon Debt](https://techdebt.fail/green-software-debt/): Energy waste, carbon-aware scheduling, honest measurement, and EU disclosure.
- [Game Development Debt](https://techdebt.fail/game-development-debt/): Crunch, engine upgrades, asset pipelines, prototype code, and frame budgets.
- [Research and Nonprofit Software Debt](https://techdebt.fail/research-software-debt/): Grant funding, turnover, and reproducibility in academic code.
- [Why Tech Debt Estimates Are Always Wrong](https://techdebt.fail/estimation-debt/): The planning fallacy, the outside view, and reference class forecasting.

## Techniques and Practice

- [Techniques](https://techdebt.fail/techniques/): Incremental strategies for paying down debt.
- [Refactoring Catalog](https://techdebt.fail/techniques/refactoring-catalog/): Before and after refactoring recipes for React, Django, Spring Boot, and .NET.
- [Characterization Tests](https://techdebt.fail/techniques/test-characterization/): Pin legacy behavior first - seams, sprout and wrap, and golden masters.
- [Dependency Untangling](https://techdebt.fail/techniques/dependency-untangling/): Map the real dependency graph, break cycles, and decompose a monolith safely.
- [Kanban and Flow-Based Debt Management](https://techdebt.fail/flow-and-kanban-debt/): Scheduling debt without sprints - WIP limits, flow efficiency, and CD3.
- [Selling to Management](https://techdebt.fail/selling-to-management/): How to win budget and buy-in for debt reduction.
- [Playbooks](https://techdebt.fail/playbooks/): Boy Scout Rule, strangler fig, debt sprints, feature flags.
- [Tech Debt Calculator](https://techdebt.fail/tech-debt-calculator/): Estimate the cost of your technical debt.
- [Error Budgets as a Tech Debt Lever](https://techdebt.fail/error-budgets/): SLOs, burn rate, and the policy that funds reliability work automatically.

## AI-Generated Debt

- [AI & Agentic Coding](https://techdebt.fail/ai-slop/): Managing debt from AI-assisted and agentic development.
- [Managing AI Code Quality](https://techdebt.fail/managing-ai-code-quality/): Keeping AI-generated code maintainable.
- [AI Product Debt](https://techdebt.fail/ai-product-debt/): Eval debt, RAG index drift, embedding migrations, guardrail drift, and model routing cost.

## About

- [About](https://techdebt.fail/about/): Who is behind TechDebt.fail.
- [Contact](https://techdebt.fail/contact/): Get in touch.