# We sound like idiots when we talk about technical debt | cyclic.sh

<https://www.cyclic.sh/posts/we-sound-like-idiots-when-we-talk-about-technical-debt>

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- Saved: February 17, 2022 (2022-02-17T23:47:59Z)
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## What Jamie wrote

As a technology leader the topic of technical debt comes up with some regularity. The term was first used by Ward Cunningham and many very smart software people have further refined it over the years. In practice though it isn't a very effective way to dialogue about, and come to solutions, about better approaches and ultimately refactoring solutions. Why? 

> Companies and business leaders don’t care if jobs are hard or annoying or take longer than they “should”. The difference between a user story taking a day or 3 days is negligible compared to its business value. Companies and their leaders care about revenue and costs. They care about customers and growth. They care about time to market. If we want to have our non-technical colleagues listen and act, we need to either improve our use of the financial terms they understand or we need to translate our message into business outcomes that they do care about.

Inside a project or service team I think the shorthand of technical debt is find. But when communicating with others, it doesn't work well. Rather than talking about technical debt it is better to focus on the value that can be created, even indirect value like "shipping faster." **It is all about selling an investment and the benefits it can provide!**

## Facts

- Kind: [Page](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/kinds/page/)

## Appears in

- [WT212: Weekly Thing #212 / Words, Mermaid, Beats](https://weekly.thingelstad.com/archive/212/), Notable

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## Elsewhere

- Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.cyclic.sh/posts/we-sound-like-idiots-when-we-talk-about-technical-debt