Why call it system debt?#
Because each cause has a fix that does not involve a person, and until it is paid the organisation pays interest in human attention every time the same non-decision reaches a queue. Ward Cunningham introduced the technical debt metaphor in 1992 for code shipped before understanding matured. System debt is its operating-model cousin, and it stops AI agents from safely doing more.
How should the system debt diagnostic be used?#
After each escalation, ask: was this valuable human judgment, or system debt? Classify interventions for a few weeks and you will probably find a handful of causes explain most of them. Use the ratio as a diagnostic and never as a target, because a team measured on fewer interventions stops asking for review on things that need it.
When nothing was missing and real judgment was exercised, that is the delegation boundary working.