Martin Fowler recently started considering the usefulness of tracking interest on a system’s technical debt. I think this is an interesting idea. But as he notes, it’s hard to estimate an objective and accurate measure of “interest” in this way – and it may end up only having limited value in the end anyway.

I’ve used the idea of technical debt for years and I like the concept. But there have been times where it has been difficult to tell exactly when is the right time to tackle the debt and settle up. On these teams, I’ve even had discussions about the impact that different technical debt items have had on new development, but usually that’s as far as it goes. That’s why I like the idea of tracking “interest” payments on technical debt.

At the very least, tracking this data seems like a good ongoing reminder of just how costly that debt actually is to the application and to the team.