Remember the old saying, “To make an omelet, you have to break some eggs”? It means that in order to achieve something, sacrifices must be made. Unfortunately for software developers, sacrifices often amount to something that nobody likes to face: technical debt.

Technical debt can insidiously eat away at time, money, usability, and a developer’s reputation. It is accrued when tradeoffs are made in the development process. For example, if a developer is running up against a hard deadline, they may be inclined to compromise on certain features in order to finish a solution on time. The idea of “I’ll finish it later” or “in the next update” is highly appealing.

In the meantime, that missing feature becomes debt to be paid later on, most likely when that developer is facing another deadline that may require additional sacrifices. Before you know it, corner-cutting practices are becoming commonplace, and debt is growing.

Like charging something on a credit card, debt can present short-term gain, but potentially devastating long-term effects. Look at it from the end user’s perspective: Organizations depend more on having a product delivered correctly as opposed to quickly.

Cutbacks on key features can cause downtime and loss of productivity. In a sense, the debt is being passed from the developer to the user. If this happens, organizations may call into question your reliability and hesitate to purchase future versions of your product. Do this too many times, and you’ll not only be saddled with debt and a solution that may be half-baked (or worse, doesn’t work at all), but also a rapidly declining market for your solutions.

While it can never be avoided entirely, there are several things development teams can do to get their arms around technical debt before it suffocates them and those who use their solutions:

1. Maintain a balance. Credit card balances are bad, but balance between agile and traditional development is good. Agile development calls for focusing on the now and not over-engineering for the future.

But, what if the product road map requires the software to deliver a specific feature or need at some point down the line, and it turns out that delivery is dependent on the work you are currently doing? Taking out a feature now could have serious consequences later on. It’s best to combine short-term and long-term development cycles. Agile development certainly has its place, but developers must always consider how a quick change today will impact future iterations of the software. In short: Keep your options open.

2. Determine what is architecturally important. It’s important to identify what will prove to be truly important aspects of the software, not just now, but in the future. If something is architecturally important—that is, if removing it will have a negative impact later, or changing it will be extremely expensive—it absolutely has to stay. This type of analysis can often be challenging, but it needs to be done in a thoughtful way. In short, know your ultimate goal, and…

3. Try not to cut corners—at all. A little snip here and there will ultimately have an adverse effect on software from an evaluation and pre-sales perspective. Remember that the work you’re doing is meant to ultimately benefit customers, partners, and other third parties. Cutting corners is no way to build and develop relationships with these individuals. You want to build customer loyalty, not curtail it. One of the ways to build that loyalty is to give the customer as much as possible. In other words, you’ll want to provide something that’s as full-featured as can be, and able to address as many customer needs as possible from day one.

4. Be judicious. If there’s not enough time to develop specific features, there is not enough time to attack every bug, so don’t try to. A particular product defect might be annoying, but it also may be innocuous, not impacting very many people. Ultimately, you may decide that you can live with the bug, and not devote valuable time and resources to addressing it. You want to alleviate technical debt, not add to the pile.

Delivering software on time is important, but making sure it does what it is meant to do is even more so. Keeping your eyes on this goal will help you deliver the solution as it’s meant to be, while saving time and headaches later. And you won’t even have to crack any eggs.

Joel Dolisy is CIO and CTO of SolarWinds, a provider of IT management software.