workaround

term

ops culture

A change that restores function without addressing why it broke, and which therefore continues until somebody actively ends it.

The distinction from a fix is not which is better but that only one of them concludes. A workaround kept under pressure and never documented becomes configuration nobody can explain, which is how a temporary routing exception survives four years and outlives the person who applied it.

Also known as: work-around, temporary fix

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