Methodology Debt is the condition that a company cuts corners on its methodology to meet a short-term goal, hurting long-term goals.

Methodology debt matters because innovation teams have high failure rates and poor employee experience. A poor methodology hurts projects, jobs, relationships, and mental health. A good methodology helps projects, jobs, relationships, and mental health.

What bad looks like is a methodology which prioritizes non-living things that don’t pay you revenue. A good methodology prioritizes living things such as paying customers, hard-working employees, and engaged stakeholders.

Methodology Debt is a riff off tech debt, where software developers cut corners on code to meet a short-term goal, jeopardizing long-term goals. Another similar kind of debt is financial debt, common to achieve a short-term goal.

Innovation practitioners use this expression to explain why a company has a disadvantage when it executes a methodology that no longer serves them well. The expression aims to motivate organizations to adopt a methodology that serves them well.