Its time to call Bullshit on "Technical Debt"

Seriously.
You know what "Technical Debt" is, right?
Ok, heres the (official?) Wikipedia definition

 Technical debt (also known as design debt or code debt) is a neologistic metaphor referring to the eventual consequences of poor or evolving software architecture and software development within a codebase. The debt can be thought of as work that needs to be done before a particular job can be considered complete. As a change is started on a codebase, there is often the need to make other coordinated changes at the same time in other parts of the codebase or documentation. The other required, but uncompleted changes, are considered debt that must be paid at some point in the future.

And in this - somewhat purist - sense, "Technical Debt" is absolutely valid.
The problem arises in the way it is almost invariably used, viz., as an excuse to not do something.

Herewith a simple exercise - the next time you hear someone cite "Technical Debt" as a reason to not do something, use the following three-part test

1. Replace "Technical Debt" with "Chewbacca".  
2. Check to see if  the information content of the explanation has changed.
3. If it hasn't changed, the explanation is bullshit.
4. Heck, if it has increased, the explanation is clearly bullshit!

Now, think back of all the times someone in your organization has done this

• We can't implement the new sorting algorithm because we're still dealing with Chewbacca
• We're going to have to wait on the GUI because of Chewbacca
• We'll update the fetzer valve as soon as we've dealt with Chewbacca

 See? Makes just about as much sense now as before, doesn't it?

Oh, as a bonus, swapping in Chewbacca sounds funnier - at least you'll have that...