Understanding Technical Debt
- Jun 19, 2025
What Is Technical Debt and How Do You Manage It?
In the world of software development, “technical debt” is a phrase that gets thrown around often—but what does it really mean, and why should your business care?
Just like financial debt, technical debt is incurred when teams take shortcuts to deliver software faster, knowing those shortcuts will need to be addressed later. It’s not always bad—in fact, it’s sometimes a strategic decision. But when left unmanaged, technical debt can grow quietly in the background, making systems harder to maintain, scale, and improve.
Let’s break it down.
Understanding Technical Debt
At its core, technical debt refers to the extra work that arises when development teams choose a quick or easy solution over the best long-term approach. This might include:
- Rushed code to meet a deadline
- Outdated libraries or frameworks
- Poor documentation
- Lack of test coverage
- Hard-coded values instead of configurable settings
Over time, these choices can compound and lead to:
- Slower development cycles
- Increased bugs and instability
- Higher onboarding time for new developers
- Resistance to change and innovation
When Technical Debt Happens (And Why It’s Sometimes Okay)
Technical debt isn’t always the result of bad practices. It’s often a trade-off made for good reasons, such as:
- Speed to market: A startup might need to validate an idea before investing in perfect architecture.
- Changing requirements: What was "good enough" six months ago may no longer be ideal.
- Limited resources: Small teams sometimes have to choose between progress and perfection.
The key is to recognize when you’re taking on debt—and to plan for paying it back.
How to Identify Technical Debt
If your team is struggling with any of the following, you may be carrying more technical debt than you realize:
- Features that take longer and longer to build
- Repeated bugs in the same parts of the codebase
- Difficulty upgrading frameworks or libraries
- Frequent comments like “we’ll clean this up later” (but later never comes)
Code reviews, architecture audits, and feedback from your dev team can all help surface where the debt lives.
Strategies to Manage Technical Debt
Managing technical debt is a lot like managing financial debt: it’s about understanding what you owe and having a plan to reduce it over time.
Here’s how we recommend doing that:
01. Make It Visible
Track technical debt in your backlog like any other work item. Treat it as part of the product, not something that happens “on the side.”
02. Prioritize the Most Costly Debt
Focus on the debt that causes the most friction: the code that slows you down, breaks frequently, or is hardest to test. You don’t need to clean everything - just the parts that hurt the most.
03. Refactor as You Go
Don’t wait for a “refactor sprint.” Encourage developers to clean up and improve code incrementally as they work on new features.
04. Balance Speed and Sustainability
There will always be pressure to ship fast. But building in space for refactoring, writing tests, and improving documentation ensures you’re not just adding more debt every sprint.
05. Communicate with Stakeholders
Explain the business impact of technical debt. Help non-technical leaders understand how investing in quality today prevents delays and costs down the line.
Technical Debt Is Inevitable—But Manageable
Every software project accrues technical debt at some point. The question isn’t whether you have it - it’s whether you’re managing it intentionally.
At Calendula Labs, we help teams assess their technical debt, prioritize cleanup efforts, and build healthier, more sustainable codebases. Whether you’re scaling a fast-growing product or modernizing a legacy system, we can help you strike the right balance between delivery speed and long-term maintainability.