Temporary Isn't a Feature: How 'We'll Fix It Later' Shapes Systems and Strategy

Most organisations treat "temporary" fixes as a verbal IOU: stitch something together now and replace it later. In reality those promises rarely survive handovers, budget rounds and new priorities—temporary code, manual workarounds and one-off processes become durable constraints. In this episode Mirko Peters lays out why "temporary" decisions calcify into permanent architecture and behaviour, how incentives and accounting practices make "later" invisible, and how both business and IT unintentionally incubate technical debt. You’ll get a concise, practical framework to classify temporary work, make time-limited choices explicit, attach sunset and ownership rules, and align budget and risk so interim solutions remain reversible. Expect clear, consultant-tested actions you can use next week: capture known-badness as a decision, set measurable sunset criteria, negotiate rollback funding, and create a lightweight governance pattern that keeps temporary actually temporary.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/business-it-it-business--6867401/support.To continue the conversation, follow Mirko Peters on LinkedIn, where more insights and real-world examples are shared from both business and IT perspectives.