Technical debt is the result of balancing business needs with 'perfect' programming ideals. Some technical debt is GOOD. Other technical debt isn't. You would be making a stupid business decision to not include good technical debt in your product.
Good technical debt example:
1) Develop a point of sale system that is single-store capable
2) Sell it to a single store
3) Sell it to another store. Instead of making the software multi-store capable, spin up another instance of the software
...
52) Sell it to store number 600, make yet another separate instance of the software. You've added a ton of features along the way, none of them include making the system multi-tenant. You have 1 full time person, paid $100k/yr to maintain the infrastructure to support all 600 stores. Version upgrades are a beast, but manageable using scripts this person has created. You're making $1M/year profit, minimum. You dominate this very small niche.
Bad technical debt:
Go for years developing your enterprise point of sale system on SQL Server 2005. Its now 2012 and 2005 is EOL. Stop all new feature production for 6 months while you upgrade to a newer SQL version.
So ... do you have good or bad technical debt?
Good technical debt example:
1) Develop a point of sale system that is single-store capable
2) Sell it to a single store
3) Sell it to another store. Instead of making the software multi-store capable, spin up another instance of the software
...
52) Sell it to store number 600, make yet another separate instance of the software. You've added a ton of features along the way, none of them include making the system multi-tenant. You have 1 full time person, paid $100k/yr to maintain the infrastructure to support all 600 stores. Version upgrades are a beast, but manageable using scripts this person has created. You're making $1M/year profit, minimum. You dominate this very small niche.
Bad technical debt:
Go for years developing your enterprise point of sale system on SQL Server 2005. Its now 2012 and 2005 is EOL. Stop all new feature production for 6 months while you upgrade to a newer SQL version.
So ... do you have good or bad technical debt?