During architecture evaluations, we typically identify technical-debt issues within a single system or project. However, the impact of technical debt often reaches beyond the scope of a single system or project. In our work, we refer to this form of technical debt as enterprise technical debt. Like all technical debt, enterprise technical debt consists of choices expedient in the short term, but often problematic over the long term. Ignoring enterprise technical debt can have significant consequences, so architects should be alert for it, and they should not let it get overlooked or ignored when they come across it. In this post, I provide examples of enterprise technical debt (and the risk it represents) taken from real-world projects.
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