The True Cost of Technical Debt: Pricing the Invisible Liability | Clickmasters

Velocity drag × engineering payroll share + incident costs + delayed-revenue opportunity — imprecise and directionally decisive; a debt register itemizes the portfolio.

Ugly-but-stable code nobody touches carries near-zero interest — pay down by interest rate, not by engineer aesthetics; the register keeps the argument honest.

Skipping the discipline this article describes until an incident, audit, or stalled project forces it — every practice above is cheaper adopted early than retrofitted under pressure.