Failtenance
/ˈfeɪl.tə.nəns/
noun (informal, service management)
1. Failure to maintain; the condition created when preventative maintenance and continual improvement are deferred until the system fails loudly.
2. A reactive “maintenance strategy” in which work occurs only after incidents, typically because proactive change is “not allowed”, “out of scope”, or “not prioritised”.
3. The most expensive way to maintain something: repeatedly paying for outages, urgency, and recovery, instead of investing in continuous improvement.
failtain verb (failtained, failtaining)
To keep a broken system operational through repeated reactive fixes rather than addressing root causes.
See also change freeze; ticket treadmill; technical debt
noun (informal, service management)
1. Failure to maintain; the condition created when preventative maintenance and continual improvement are deferred until the system fails loudly.
2. A reactive “maintenance strategy” in which work occurs only after incidents, typically because proactive change is “not allowed”, “out of scope”, or “not prioritised”.
3. The most expensive way to maintain something: repeatedly paying for outages, urgency, and recovery, instead of investing in continuous improvement.
failtain verb (failtained, failtaining)
To keep a broken system operational through repeated reactive fixes rather than addressing root causes.
See also change freeze; ticket treadmill; technical debt
"The server has been down for six hours because management refused to upgrade the hardware last year. Welcome to failtenance."
"Investing in the refactor now would save us millions in future failtenance costs."
"Stop trying to fix the root cause; our budget only allows us to failtain this until the contract expires."
"Investing in the refactor now would save us millions in future failtenance costs."
"Stop trying to fix the root cause; our budget only allows us to failtain this until the contract expires."
Failtenance by TechnicalDebtCollector April 16, 2026
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