Technical Debt Isn't Technical - It's Poor Communication

Last week, a founder asked me to review his codebase. "We need to understand our technical debt," he said. I looked at his backlog instead.

Holy shit.

You want to know about technical debt? Here's a ticket I found: "Users should be able to do the thing we discussed"

That's not technical debt waiting to happen. That's technical debt already spreading like cancer through your codebase.

The Myth of Technical Debt

We've all heard the usual story: Technical debt comes from rushed deadlines, choosing quick fixes over proper solutions, skipping tests, blah blah blah.

Bullshit.

Real technical debt starts way before any code is written. It starts with garbage requirements, vague tickets, and all the unspoken assumptions we let slide because "the team will figure it out."

Want proof? Let's look at how "normal" tickets turn into technical disasters.

The Lifecycle of a Terrible Ticket

Stage 1: The Birth

Title: Add user roles
Description: We need admin users
Priority: High

Stage 2: The Implementation

Developer: "Okay... I guess I'll add a boolean isAdmin field..." commits code

Stage 3: Three Months Later

PM: "Wait, we need moderator roles too." Developer: "But the code only handles admin flags..." PM: "Can't you just add another flag?" developer dies inside

Stage 4: The Spiral

  • Add another boolean field
  • Sprinkle if-statements everywhere
  • Copy-paste permission checks
  • Pray nothing breaks

Stage 5: The "Technical" Debt

  • Rigid permission system
  • Duplicated code
  • Inconsistent checks
  • Unmaintainable mess

But here's the truth: This isn't technical debt. It's the cost of not spending 10 minutes to write down what you actually needed.

The Real Conversation We Should Have Had

Instead of that vague ticket, imagine this:

Title: Implement Role-Based Access Control for User Management

Problem:
As we scale, we need different levels of access for team members. Currently, everyone has the same access level, which is becoming a security and usability issue.

Required Roles:
- Admin (full system access)
- Moderator (content management only)
- Support (read-only + customer data)
- Regular User (standard access)

Future Considerations:
- We might need custom roles later
- Some clients want their own admin roles
- We'll need audit logs of role changes

Technical Requirements:
- Role inheritance (moderator inherits from support)
- Granular permission checks
- Role assignment audit trail
- API endpoints for role management

Different outcome? You bet your ass.

Why We Write Bad Tickets

  1. "We're moving too fast" Translation: "We're going to move even slower when we have to rewrite this in 6 months"

  2. "The developers know what we need" Translation: "I'm too lazy to write it down and I'll blame them when it's wrong"

  3. "We can figure out the details later" Translation: "I haven't thought this through and I'm making it someone else's problem"

  4. "It's just a simple change" Translation: "I don't understand the complexity and I'm about to unleash chaos"

The Real Cost

Every time you write a vague ticket, you're not just creating future technical debt. You're:

  1. Making Architectural Decisions By Accident When requirements are unclear, developers make assumptions. Those assumptions become architecture. That architecture becomes your prison.

  2. Building Future Refactoring Work "Quick fixes" for unclear requirements never stay contained. They spread through your codebase like a virus, infecting every new feature that touches them.

  3. Killing Developer Morale Nothing burns out good developers faster than constantly rebuilding features because the requirements were half-baked.

How to Break the Cycle

  1. Write Things Down

    • What problem are we solving?
    • Who needs this and why?
    • What might change in the future?
    • What should explicitly NOT happen?

  2. Think in Systems, Not Features Bad ticket: "Add login with Google" Good ticket: "Implement OAuth provider system starting with Google"

  3. Document Assumptions

    • What scale are we building for?
    • What performance do we need?
    • What won't we support?
    • What can break?

  4. Consider the Future

    • What's coming next?
    • What might need to change?
    • Who else might use this?
    • What could go wrong?

A Real World Example

Here's a ticket that prevents technical debt:

Title: Implement Payment Processing System Integration

Context:
We're starting with Stripe but might add more payment providers later.
Current volume: 100 transactions/day
Expected within 6 months: 1000 transactions/day

Requirements:
- Process credit card payments through Stripe
- Store minimal card info (last 4 digits + expiry for display)
- Handle common failure cases (insufficient funds, expired card)
- Implement idempotency for retry safety
- Log all attempts (success/failure) for support
- Implement webhook handling for async events

Out of Scope:
- Cryptocurrency support
- Direct debit/ACH (planned for Q3)
- Subscription billing (separate project)

Technical Considerations:
- Must support multiple providers in future
- Need retry mechanism for failed webhooks
- Consider rate limiting for fraud prevention
- Plan for eventual consistency in status updates

Testing Requirements:
- Integration tests with Stripe test mode
- Chaos testing for network failures
- Load testing at 10x current volume
- Webhook failure scenarios

This isn't over-specification. This is the minimum information needed to build something that won't become technical debt in 6 months.

The Truth About Technical Debt

Your codebase is a reflection of your communication. Clean code comes from clear requirements. Technical debt comes from the assumptions we were too lazy to write down.

Want to reduce technical debt? Start with better tickets. Everything else is just dealing with symptoms.

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