Rigorous management of technical debt

Another habit is that of rigorous management of technical debt. The term debt in itself suggests that there is a cost (interest) associated with the delay of addressing an issue. To keep moving at a constant pace and not slowly lose speed over time, it is crucial to keep the number of bugs or architectural issues to a minimum and only tolerate so much. Within some teams this is even formalized in agreements. For example, a team can agree that the number of unfixed bugs should never exceed the number of team members. This means, that if a team has four members and a ninth bug is reported that no new work will be undertaken until at least one bug should be fixed.