On the limits of the technical debt metaphor some guidance on going beyond

Over recent years the topic of technical debt has gained significant attention in the software engineering community. The area of technical debt research is somewhat peculiar within software engineering as it is built on a metaphor. This has certainly benefited the field as it helps to achieve a lot of attention and eases communication about the topic, however, it seems it is to some extent also sidetracking research work, if the metaphor is used beyond its range of applicability. In this paper, we focus on the limits of the metaphor and the problems that arise when over-extending its applicability. We do also aim at providing some additional insights by proposing certain ways of handling these restrictions.