Technical debt

The accumulated future cost of shortcuts and outdated decisions in a product's code and systems, paid as extra time and risk when making changes.

Example

A team spending 45% of its time on workarounds and fixes instead of new features.

Some debt is a sensible trade-off early on; the risk is when it grows faster than the team.

Scalability — The ability of a system or business to handle much greater volume without a proportional rise in cost or a loss of reliability.
Technical Risk — The risk that a technology will not work as intended, cannot be produced at scale, or takes much longer to develop than planned.

Ask what breaks, and what it costs, at ten times the customers — Technical diligence tests whether a product can serve far more customers without collapsing or destroying margins, by looking at architecture, infrastructure costs and past incidents. (11 min)
Technical debt shows up as time engineers cannot spend on new work — Technical debt is the accumulated cost of shortcuts in a product's code and systems. Diligence measures it through how much engineering time goes to maintenance, how fast changes ship and how often they break things. (10 min)
If one engineer leaving would stop the product, that is the risk — Technical diligence on people looks at how knowledge is concentrated, how the team hires and makes decisions, and whether technical leadership matches the company's next stage. (9 min)