Wholeheartedly true. Vague requirements are definitely the bane of my existence, just this last week I had a massive story I was working on which I implemented only to be told that I misunderstood the story at hand. After pointing out the confusion with the task, product admitted they got the requirements wrong.<p>Don't get me wrong, I like the story format of detailing requirements, in most cases it definitely helps (although I know many developers who dislike the story format), but it is not without its issues. The weak leak is always the product owner writing the wrong stories within a task.<p>In my opinion the biggest contributor to tech debt is NOT lack of stories in tasks or poorly written ones leading to vague requirements (although it doesn't help), it is unrealistic timelines and failing to factor in testing. When people are pushed to achieve a long list of things in a short amount of time, they take shortcuts to get them done which appeases the product owners but leaves some landmines in the codebase waiting to be stepped on.<p>The biggest issue with Agile in my opinion is lack of time devoted to testing. It works on a cycle of "You estimated we can get this much done within this much time" I have never been in a planning meeting that even mentioned testing as part of the normal development cycle, it is always an afterthought when the other big ticket items are done and time is running out. Time for writing tests and testing should be instantly baked into the Agile process (maybe it is and my experience has been unfortunate), this will significantly reduce tech debt.<p>I think the issue with testing and technical debt in my experience has been the fact the places I have worked in like to call themselves Agile, they have the daily standups that always descend into debates and meetings, they have the planning poker events and we do sprints, however they don't fully adhere to the rules of Agile. When you start slipping in extra tasks that were not estimated on or were just added and slip them into the current sprint, that is not Agile. When you start changing deadlines and priorities midway through a sprint, that is not Agile. I think this is a problem that is more prevalent than people realise. There are misconceptions as to what proper Agile is.