>> The burden is on whoever introduces this silly "Tech Debt" notion to 1) clarify what exactly it means and how to measure it; and 2) give a model in which the measurement can correlate with an improvement to the software process.

I would highly recommend this book: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/managing-technical-debt...

Also, read the papers presented at this conference series. https://2019.techdebtconf.org/#program