The fastest way to remove crap from your system… Is to put no crap in

I think there are times when you really do need to rush. E.g., major production issue, or major world event that needs immediate response. In that case, I'm willing to take on technical debt with the explicit commitment that the debt gets paid down as soon at the emergency is past.

The problem with that approach is that so many companies run in a state of permanent emergency. Supremely important urgent thing A is immediately followed by B, C, and D. Of course, those are all just normal requests that people are freaking out about. Which means that when a true emergency happens, everybody's too mired in fake emergencies and technical debt to respond well.