When people talk about technical debt I always wonder if the debt is intentional

When people talk about technical debt I always wonder if the debt is intentional or just the result of not thinking things through properly.

In my experience systems that are in bad shape tend to be so for a handful of reasons.

- Little to no structure - Instead of having a strategy on how to build systems, people make things up as they go. With many people doing this, the end result is never good.

- Little to no deep thinking - Instead of thinking things through properly people do a quick brainstorming on a whiteboard and then implement. Missing important aspects of the implementation due to not doing any deep thinking. IN this case speed kills.

- Unclear or obfuscated requirements - When the need is never really defined and/or constantly shift then you can only do so much thinking before everything becomes reactive and quality drops like a stone.

- No time to do things right - Stressful time limits, usually from bad requirements or lack of good estimations, reduce the time available to actually think things through. This can also be an organization issue if the culture is to just run and fix whatever you can here and now to make things look good instead of actually doing good.

- Lack of care - People that are treated poorly stop caring. It is as easy as that. When people stop caring, which usually comes from disrespect or abuse in the workplace, then there is little you can do to prevent damage from happening to the service or product.

The fix is easy: Treat people with respect and make sure there is time and expectations to think things through before you build things.

Ad-hoc running is madness, and it does nothing to help making the organization successful.