One-off feature requests which are of the form "We need this for today, nothing fancy, just a special check for X customer". The problems with these are:
Poor planning : These requests are a symptom of poor planning and often involve patchwork solutions to keep everything running fine (for now).
Permanence : Many requests which are a "hack" for today become accepted as part of daily flow. Even if they are stopped, code is often added but rarely removed. After a while, the programmer who implemented the feature would have left the team and even the people who requested the feature will not have a solid memory of the details.
Prevalence : Such special cases add up in codebase very quickly. Accepting even once sets a precedent and then the floodgates for these kinds of requests will burst open!
Emergent complexity : Such features are suggested in isolation and since it is an "easy" feature, no one pays attention to how these features interact with different parts of the system. It can lead to emergent complexity where combinations of small exceptions can lead to an unexpected behavior of the system.
IMHO, the best way to answer these kinds of requests (depending on how mature your company is) would be flat say no or ask for enough time to implement it in a sensible way.
A caveat for startups. Many startups are still experimenting with their core product when they launch. Such features are needed for fast iteration and feedback. Being ruthless in removing code for failed experiments is required to manage code base.
+1 to "Poor Planning" here. Technical debt is, as other users have mentioned, meant to be a conscious decision. Engineers need to make constant trade offs when developing software and technical solutions. Without proper planning, it's likely that engineers don't have all the information they need to make educated decisions about trade offs, leading to poorly implemented or short sighted solutions. If you're unable to consciously understand the trade offs you're making, you'll likely wind up with unintended technical debt or an inadequate solution.
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One-off feature requests which are of the form "We need this for today, nothing fancy, just a special check for X customer". The problems with these are:
IMHO, the best way to answer these kinds of requests (depending on how mature your company is) would be flat say no or ask for enough time to implement it in a sensible way.
A caveat for startups. Many startups are still experimenting with their core product when they launch. Such features are needed for fast iteration and feedback. Being ruthless in removing code for failed experiments is required to manage code base.
+1 to "Poor Planning" here. Technical debt is, as other users have mentioned, meant to be a conscious decision. Engineers need to make constant trade offs when developing software and technical solutions. Without proper planning, it's likely that engineers don't have all the information they need to make educated decisions about trade offs, leading to poorly implemented or short sighted solutions. If you're unable to consciously understand the trade offs you're making, you'll likely wind up with unintended technical debt or an inadequate solution.