Technical Debt Inventory and Attributes

Description — A stable, unique identifier assigned to the Technical Debt Item and retained through every lifecycle state, merge, split, closure, archival, and reopening event.

Benefit(s) — Preserves stable identity, integration, traceability, and cross-inventory traversal.

Source — Manual.

Examples — TDI-0001842

Description — A concise human-readable name that distinguishes the Technical Debt Item in searches, reports, approvals, dashboards, and conversations.

Benefit(s) — Makes the item understandable and distinguishable in searches, approvals, dashboards, and discussions without relying on its identifier alone.

Source — Manual.

Examples — Unsupported Identity Runtime

Description — A precise statement of the technical condition or unresolved obligation, where it exists, the governed Assets involved, and the additional burden, cost, difficulty, Risk, or constraint it creates.

Benefit(s) — Creates a shared, testable understanding of the condition, its location, and the burden it creates, reducing ambiguity during qualification, assessment, remediation, and closure.

Source — Manual.

Examples — The production identity service runs on an unsupported runtime, increasing Security exposure and constraining modernization for 28 dependent applications.

Description — A concise summary of the evidence currently supporting qualification, assessment, decision-making, remediation, validation, or closure.

Benefit(s) — Gives decision-makers a concise view of the current proof supporting the item and helps them judge whether deeper evidence review is necessary.

Source — Manual.

Description — The defined scope that makes this condition independently assignable, assessable, prioritizable, treatable, validatable, and closable from other conditions.

Benefit(s) — Prevents unrelated conditions from being combined, supports independent ownership and prioritization, and makes remediation and closure criteria enforceable.

Source — Manual.

Examples — Runtime support condition only; missing recovery documentation is governed as a separate Documentation Debt item.

Description — The documented reasoning explaining why the candidate does or does not qualify as a governed Technical Debt Item.

Benefit(s) — Makes the decision to accept or reject a candidate transparent, repeatable, and auditable, while reducing inconsistent treatment of similar findings.

Source — Manual.