Managing technical debt

Technical debt is a software development concept. It reflects the implied cost of additional rework caused by choosing a quick and restrictive solution instead of a more comprehensive but slower one.

Technical debt is generally an issue that transcends Scrum and applies to any type of software development process or methodology. However, it is particularly prominent in Scrum due to its application of short, focused development iterations.

How is technical debt created?

Let's consider a simple example: Bob, a developer, is working on a task that requires the storing of customer and product details in a database. Bob creates a single database table and inputs the data for both customers and products in it. This solution works and will continue to work for as long as the number of customers and products is small.

However, as this number increases with time, the maintenance of that table will become more difficult, data duplication will occur, and...