There is the more obvious kind of debt that you will incur during the process of the strategic purchase. When it comes to the integration work, there will be another kind of debt that your company will take on: tech debt.

The tech debt will consist of the scaffolding, hacks, and shortcuts employed to ensure the timelines are met during the transition. All debt must be paid off or forgiven at some point.

The tech debt is paid off when the hacks and shortcuts are replace with more permanent solutions. Tech debt can be forgiven in two situations: the hacks and shortcuts are accepted in the tech ecosystem, or they are removed with any scaffolding used to facilitate the migration of the acquired assets to their new/permanent home.

Like all debt, there is a due date associated with it, but it doesn’t have a fixed date. Instead it is an increase risk of an incident or delay in rolling out new functionality. Also, depending on the type of debt incurred, it can also grow over time until it becomes unmanageable.

This is why, when your integration work is about to incur some kind of tech debt, you must make sure to log it and assign responsibility to properly address it. This way you won’t lose track of it, and can address it once the more critical deadlines have passed. Otherwise, it may get forgotten, and the interest payments will become unbearable.

Ultimately, it isn’t something to fear, and just like a credit card, can provide you some flexibility when it comes to time/delivery crunches, but it must be paid back at some point and usually with interest.