The Economics of Technical Debt

by Stephen Chin, Erik Huddleston, Walter Bodwell, Israel Gat

As they say about economics, you might ignore it, but it will not ignore you. If ignored, technical debt can lead to a broad spectrum of difficulties, from collapsed roadmaps to an inability to respond to customer problems in a timely manner and even to the code becoming "toxic." The seven articles in this issue of Cutter IT Journal explain how not to neglect technical debt, what to do in case neglect has already taken place, and how technical debt techniques could be applied in domains where they have not been used before.