More than three years I was trying to transfer the jidoka approach from Toyota Production System into the software practices. Finally I find my translation, it’s very simple lean principle “Never Fix Later!”. Under the word “fix” I mean wide definition like fix the bug, make the code clean, refactor the code, redesign the code and so on. Actually this lean principle rely on Zen principle “Retreat to get ahead”. Probably this is one of the best weapons for technical debts.
P.S. Probably I should have named it “Never sweep the rubbish under the rug!” 😀
this depends too much by the context in which you work – if you work in context where this principle is accepted as law – you are right, but if you work in context where it will take too long to educate other people in this principle – especially if you have not administrative power to make this principle law – forget… 🙂