In conversations regarding technical debt (and technical improvement), I often hear that there is an understanding gap between technical people and business people. As an experiment, I thought it would be interesting to attempt to bridge that gap by illustrating what technical debt looks like, with an analogy. The Conversation Setting: “Widgets Inc.”, a manufacturing company that makes widgets Characters: Max – VP Sales – responsible for making sales commitments to customers John – Plant Manager – responsible for manufacturing the widgets January 2nd: Max: Hi John, tell me where we are from a production perspective. I have two big customers breathing down my neck. John: Our current capacity is 1000 widgets a month. Max: John, I need you to do better than that. We’ve just committed to deliver 1500 units each to two customers by the end of February. John: Well… our capacity of 1000 per month includes time for scheduled maintenance as well as time for improvement projects that will in