The five faces of technical debt
Technical debt
An invoice with the wrong address, three hundred avoidable refunds, a report overstated by 1,200 euros. Five cases separating code, tooling and organisational problems.
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Field notes and practical guidance for deciding what comes next for your product.
When every initiative needs permission
Technical debt
A report takes an hour every Friday. Automating it looks easy, until a duplicate explains the manual work. A case separating a useful objection from waiting without a decision.
When a simple field becomes a major change
Technical debt
One order for Lyon, one invoice for Paris, and a single address field. A worked example of the errors that adding a second field does not fix on its own.
A fix finished on Tuesday, released the following week
Technical debt
Three hours to fix and check an error, then six days before release. A worked example tracing the cost of waiting through the support team’s workload.
The website responds, but the invoices never arrive
Technical debt
120 paid orders, 120 invoices created, 118 sends accepted. Two invoices are enough to show what an availability check does not verify.
The access that outlives the tools
Technical debt
A script still present, an expired domain still permitted and permissions still to examine. What those findings establish, and what needs checking before claiming a compromise.
At Gridky, a month and a half without new features
Technical debt
Hundreds of Slack exceptions, a team split between incidents and features, then an agreed pause in development. What we changed during Drynuary and what remained afterwards.