Henrik Kniberg – The Solution to Technical Debt:

“Crap gets into the code because programmers put it in! Let me make that crystal clear: Crappy Code is created by programmers.

[…] However, the most probable reason for why you are writing crappy code is: Pressure.

[…] Sometimes the cause of the pressure is the programmers themselves. Developing a feature almost always take longer than we think, and we really want to be a Good Programmer and make those stakeholders happy, so the pressure builds up from inside.

[…] If you are creating Crappy Code, development is going to get slower and slower over time. There is no business sense in this, and it is certainly not agile.

[…] Tell the world, and the people who you believe are pressuring you into writing code: “We have been writing crappy code. Sorry about that. We’ll stop now.”

[…] The real source of pressure (if there was any) will reveal itself. Quality is invisible in the short term, and that needs to be explained. Take the battle!”