Absolutely — the example that I’ve most recently dealt with in my role was around page load times for one of our applications. The way we had our queries structured made sense for the original vision for the product, but as it evolved we realized that it didn’t scale well, and was impacting page load times. Our query scheme had become tech debt.

Tracking page load times as an indicator, we were able to hammer away at our tech debt issue while also tying it to customer outcomes.

Another common economic impact, though somewhat less direct, is that tech debt slows future time to deliver features.

I remember a product management simulation I participated in one time that gave you the option to dedicate some of your team’s time towards reducing technical debt, the reward for which was increased velocity for the rest of the simulated project, the cost of which was the opportunity to work on end-user functionality that delivered direct value.

That velocity can be hard to measure, but it’s possible. As a team accrues tech debt for a particular product, the time to resolve bugs and put out new features goes up.