Technical Debt: A Financial Framework

Technical debt gets talked about like a moral failing. “We have so much tech debt.” “The team keeps cutting corners.” “We need to stop and fix things.” The framing is usually emotional, which means the decisions that follow are usually not very good. A CFO talking about financial debt does not sound like this. A CFO talks about principal, interest rates, covenants, amortization schedules, and the cost of capital. Debt is not good or bad — it is a financial instrument with a specific cost and a s