A client’s team spent a full week adding a CSV export to their admin panel. Two engineers, clear requirements, maybe a day of actual work. The rest of the time went to understanding existing code well enough to change it safely. That’s what I call codebase drag: when the codebase makes every task take longer than it should. It doesn’t show up in any dashboard or sprint report.
Not sure. Something can be written fine and technically good but it’s difficult to get started in… Its a headwind… Ie drag.
I don’t see that as debt?
Anything that makes the codebase harder to maintain than it should be is technical debt.
Whilst true, I was not talking about maintenance…
Rather “getting started in” ie onboarding.