I still like shoddy construction/shanty village as an analogy. People know what it is and it is tangible unlike debt or any other financial reference.
You can build a shanty village without a plan that supports a million people, but the first fire, storm, earthquake, etc destroys the whole thing. Also, for some reason when Bob flushes his toilet, the power goes out briefly in the capitol building. Nobody knows why, but routing power through the sewer last sprint to save time probably wasn't a good idea.
Seconded. The point is not that bad code is a necessary evil (it's really not), but that they are going to end up with it if they insist on doing things a certain way.
Another good one is, "Well, I can build you a 20,000-foot fire-breathing chicken made of balsamwood, if that's what you want, or if you just want me to parse a CSV file, I can do that too."
As a developer who has to hear the "tech debt" thing all the time from my co-workers, I really hate that concept. Metaphorically or otherwise, I don't like being in the position of a bank demanding high interest payments from a poor sap who didn't realize what he was getting into. That's not how I view myself in relation to my employers and clients.
You can build a shanty village without a plan that supports a million people, but the first fire, storm, earthquake, etc destroys the whole thing. Also, for some reason when Bob flushes his toilet, the power goes out briefly in the capitol building. Nobody knows why, but routing power through the sewer last sprint to save time probably wasn't a good idea.