Are You Carrying Technical Debt Without Realizing It?

Written By Craig Brace

Key takeaways:

  • Hidden tech debt slows feature delivery and increases operational risk

  • Small changes become harder, estimates less reliable, and development teams become more cautious

  • These problems feel normal over time, even as they limit business goals

  • The solution is targeted maintenance, not rebuilding everything

  • An objective assessment shows where to invest for the highest return

Estimated reading time: ~4 minutes

Running a software ecosystem is a lot like owning a car. You can put off oil changes, ignore the warning lights, and keep driving as long as the engine still starts every day.

At first, it feels like you are saving time and money by ignoring routine maintenance. But the car is slowly wearing down. 

Maintenance tasks that you skipped turn into bigger problems: poor performance, breakdowns, and eventually a vehicle you don’t trust on long trips. 

Software tech debt works the same way; servicing technical debt is the “routine maintenance" that you can’t afford to skip in your software ecosystem. If you postpone routine upkeep tasks like refactoring, improving tests, updating libraries, and cleaning up fragile areas of the system, you end up paying for it later through extended outages, emergency fixes, and slow progress. 

The software teams that perform the best treat technical debt as part of the cost of ownership, not a nice-to-have when time allows.

A Look Under The Hood

Some car problems are obvious. A flat tire forces you to stop. But the most expensive issues often build slowly and quietly.

Technical debt works the same way. It is not always an obvious failure. It is the gradual buildup of shortcuts and skipped maintenance that turns into friction you feel everywhere.

It often comes from:

  • Libraries and packages that are no longer actively supported

  • Quick fixes added during busy periods that never get revisited

  • Layers of uncoordinated changes made by different teams over time

  • Third-party dependencies that evolve faster than your system can keep track of

  • Informal or inconsistent change management practices

None of this happens because your team is careless. It happens because your business initiatives typically outpace your development – and because management tends to prioritize “feature development” over routine maintenance.

The problem is that this technical debt compounds. And eventually, it starts to run the show.

How This Actually Impacts Your Business

When technical debt builds up, you feel it everywhere.

  • Features take longer to estimate and longer to ship

  • Small changes carry outsized risk

  • Teams avoid touching certain parts of the system, out of a fear of unexpected breakage

  • Deadlines and schedules  become less predictable

  • Engineering conversations focus on constraints instead of possibilities

Over time, your technology stops supporting your business goals and starts limiting them.

Why the Issues Feel “Normal” Over Time

Your team lives in the system every day. That familiarity helps them keep things running, but it can also make problems invisible.

Workarounds become normal. Complexity becomes expected. Risk becomes accepted. You rely more and more on the legacy developer to fix these things, but one day they won’t be around to fix it. 

Without stepping back, it is hard to see which issues actually matter and which ones are simply noise.

That is where an outside perspective changes everything.

The Solution Is Simple

You do not need to rewrite everything. You need clarity on what technical debt is costing you and which improvements will deliver the highest return. By identifying and addressing the areas of tech debt that create the most friction and risk, you can reduce future maintenance costs, improve delivery speed and predictability, and lower operational and security exposure. With a realistic, phased plan, your team can spend more time building value and less time fighting the system. 

Wouldn’t it feel good to trust the car you’re driving?

Don’t Get Stranded On The Side Of The Road

If your software feels harder to change than it should, there is likely hidden technical debt holding you back.

A short conversation can help you understand what is really going on and what to do next.

Schedule a tech audit and get a clear, objective view of where your systems are slowing you down — and how to fix it without derailing your roadmap.

Craig Brace