Taming Technical Debt: A Guide for Engineering Leaders

Technical debt is one of the biggest challenges faced by Engineering leaders. Unchecked debt can dramatically slow development velocity, increase maintenance costs, and cripple scalability. Managing technical debt requires a critical balancing act between innovation and stability, speed and sustainability.

Challenges of Managing Technical Debt

1. Understand Impact

Many organizations struggle with quantifying technical debt. Without clear metrics, it’s difficult to assess the impact of accumulated debt and prioritize it effectively. Teams often don’t notice the problem until it manifests as slower development cycles or production incidents.

2. Competing Business Priorities

Engineering teams are under pressure to deliver new features, meet tight deadlines, and respond to market demands. Product Management seldom sees value in addressing technical debt, prioritizing short term revenue over long-term sustainability.

3. Scaling an Aging Codebase

As a company grows, an early stage architecture that worked for a small team may no longer support new scalability requirements. Refactoring or re-architecting systems while keeping the business running smoothly is a significant challenge.

4. Accumulated Debt Becomes a Culture Problem

If technical debt is consistently ignored, engineers can become demotivated and disengaged. A culture of "we’ll fix it later" can lead to a codebase that is increasingly difficult to maintain, impacting developer productivity and retention. Many teams have faced the frustration of "only one person really understands that code", creating knowledge silos and bottlenecks.

5. Technical Debt from Mergers & Acquisitions

For companies growing through acquisitions, integrating disparate systems can create a massive technical debt burden. Different tech stacks, coding styles, and infrastructure makes alignment complex and costly. Beyond the technical challenges, interpersonal conflicts often arise as teams defend their architectures. This can lead to avoidance, delaying necessary but difficult decisions that require significant resources.

Best Practices for Managing Technical Debt

1. Make Technical Debt Visible & Measurable

Establish clear metrics to quantify technical debt:

• Change Failure Rate (CFR): How often deployments fail due to legacy issues?

• Cycle Time: How long does it take to ship features in different parts of the codebase?

• Code Complexity Scores: Using tools like SonarQube or CodeClimate to identify hotspots.

Regularly review and document areas of the codebase that need refactoring through a technical debt backlog.

2. Adopt a Continuous Refactoring Approach

Avoid waiting for a “big rewrite” that might never happen. Instead, integrate incremental refactoring into the team’s workflow:

• Allocate dedicated engineering time in every sprint. Size work to include refactoring as needed.

• Implementing the Boy Scout Rule: Always leave the code cleaner than you found it.

• Encouraging engineers to submit small refactoring PRs alongside feature work.

3. Align with Business Goals & Get Executive Buy-In

CTOs and VPs should connect technical debt efforts to business outcomes and communicate its importance throughout the organization. Buy-in from non-technical colleagues is key. Frame the conversation in terms of:

• Faster time-to-market: Reducing debt accelerates development.

• Lower maintenance costs: Less fragile systems mean fewer production issues.

• Efficient Scaling: Optimized code allows infrastructure to seamlessly handle increased demand.

• Better developer productivity and retention: Engineers prefer working in maintainable, scalable codebases.

4. Strategic Rewrites When Necessary

While incremental improvements are crucial, sometimes a major rewrite is unavoidable, especially when fundamental architectural bottlenecks exist. Best practices for rewrites:

• Phase them in gradually. Introduce new services alongside old ones (e.g., strangler fig pattern).

• Ensure executive alignment. Make the case for investment in terms of ROI.

• Have a rollback plan. Mitigate risk by deploying in stages.

5. Foster a Culture of Technical Excellence

As John Wooden said, “If you don't have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?” Encourage teams to take ownership of technical debt by:

• Promoting internal tech talks and learning sessions on architecture improvements.

• Rewarding engineers who proactively reduce debt.

• Ensuring that code review processes include technical debt considerations.

6. Use Automation & Modern Tooling

Invest in tools that help prevent technical debt from accumulating:

• Static Code Analysis: Helps identify problematic code before it’s merged.

• Automated Testing & CI/CD Pipelines: Ensures stable releases while refactoring.

• Observability & Performance Monitoring: Helps detect slow or brittle parts of the system early.

Conclusion

Some technical debt is inevitable, but it doesn’t have to be a growth blocker. By making debt visible, measurable, and a continuous priority, engineering leaders can prevent it from accumulating to a critical level. The key is balancing incremental improvements with strategic rewrites, getting executive buy-in, and fostering a culture of technical excellence.

For Engineering leaders, managing technical debt isn’t just about maintaining code—it’s about ensuring long-term business agility and engineering velocity.