>"Technical Debt" is this level of crummy metaphor. I love Cunningham's original definition. Do your best to model the business problem with the understanding you have. Later, pay down that debt by refactoring.
I on the other hand hate Cunningham's original definition because the metaphor maps badly, debt is not something that is poorly understand that becomes clearer the more information you have. Maybe that would be Technical Risk.
Your second example:
>"That choice will severely limit our capabilities in the future, and be incredibly hard to change."
>"I'm willing to take on some tech debt to prioritize shipping."
is a better metaphor because debt is the thing you take on that you need to pay off later with some knowledge of what level of debt you have. That said it's still sort of bad because debt would be nice to have sort of a ball park estimate of how much must be paid to get rid of it. If you don't have that estimate to go on it's beyond technical debt, and maybe more like technical favor owed to the mob.
I on the other hand hate Cunningham's original definition because the metaphor maps badly, debt is not something that is poorly understand that becomes clearer the more information you have. Maybe that would be Technical Risk.
Your second example:
>"That choice will severely limit our capabilities in the future, and be incredibly hard to change."
>"I'm willing to take on some tech debt to prioritize shipping."
is a better metaphor because debt is the thing you take on that you need to pay off later with some knowledge of what level of debt you have. That said it's still sort of bad because debt would be nice to have sort of a ball park estimate of how much must be paid to get rid of it. If you don't have that estimate to go on it's beyond technical debt, and maybe more like technical favor owed to the mob.