Strategies for Tech Debt Management

Business value vs. platform health? It’s not either-or. It’s a portfolio strategy. Over the years, I’ve seen companies take on massive multi-year re-platforming efforts. These usually succeed in launching a shiny new platform...But at what cost? 1️⃣ The business is often set back significantly during the transition. 2️⃣ The new platform rarely delivers the features the business actually needed when the effort was launched - requirements were lost in translation, subject matter experts left and knowledge lost, context was missing. 3️⃣ Worse, the team stopped learning. No customer feedback for years, no iteration, and by the time the platform is done, the market has changed. On the flip side, I’ve also seen what happens when platform health is ignored: Customer satisfaction is impacted with more disruptions and incidents. Tech debt grows while the work slows down. Less productivity from engineering and product teams. Morale dips. Velocity drops. Less experimentation. Growth stalls as competitors move faster and better. That’s why I approach this challenge like a portfolio. 📊 Most of the investment should go toward delivering business value. That should NEVER stop. 🔧 But 20–30% must be consistently allocated to platform modernization, platform health, engineering excellence, and reducing technical debt with consistent incremental delivery Neglecting that part of the portfolio doesn’t just build up future risk — it quietly erodes your ability to move fast and deliver impact. It's not a tug-of-war between tech and business. It’s about investing wisely in both — today and for the long run.

I was a CTO at a company with a LOT of technical debt. Here's how I handled it. 1. I found someone in the org (non-exec) who cared about the issue and was organized. 2. We created a framework to rank our tech debt & built a common mini "language" to talk about it easily. 3. Next we documented the entire tech ecosystem & applied the framework to categorize it all. 4. We met with business stakeholders like Product & Sales to add their perspective into the ranking. 5. We grouped the tech debt into a) never touch, b) fix ASAP and c) fix incrementally. 6. We calculated the potential ROI on each item to help acquire funding to fix it. (This was difficult). 7. We built a plan for remediation and integrated the plan into the roadmap. 8. We created a tracking / monitoring best practice specifically for the tech debt remediation work. 9. We were pretty hardcore about reporting the ROI up to the CEO on all the tech debt fix work. 10. After a while of doing this tech debt remediation got baked into our organization. What's the big lesson? Anything can be done in an org if its important enough, you focus on it and you work hard to achieve it. Interesting in more content like this? Sign up for my free newsletter at https://buff.ly/4ccyrM0. #TechLeadership #softwaredevelopment #CTO

4 Salesforce technical debt to work on in 2025 (Give your org some TLC) Technical debt creation is inevitable. But like any debt, there comes a time you need to pay it back. If you don't, you'll pay "interest”. It becomes higher as you wait longer. The sooner you catch problems, the cheaper it is to fix them At some point, it becomes critical: → The development team gets slowed down → It causes org crashes →Your ability to use Salesforce features becomes limited. Don't wait until that point. Identify them and work on them now. Here are a few aspects you should stop ignoring: 1. Stop ignoring unused fields and objects. → More fields, more headache when troubleshooting. → You might be hitting the limits. How to eliminate: ✅ Run a field and object usage report using Field Trip (AppExchange). ✅ Identify unused ones and archive or delete them. ✅ Keep only what adds value to reporting and automation. 2. Stop relying on outdated automation. → Workflow Rules and Process Builder are deprecated at the end of the year. → Those old Visualforce pages?... Time to say goodbye → They are inefficient and resource-consuming How to eliminate: ✅ Audit all workflows, process builders VFP, and maybe even triggers (Flows/Apex). ✅ Migrate legacy automation to Flow/Apex for better performance (Split to Before/After Save) ✅ Consolidate redundant processes, remove irrelevant archival logic. 3. Stop neglecting data quality. → Don't say "We’ll clean it up later”... Later is now. → To get the most out of AI, this is a must. How to eliminate: ✅ Implement required fields, visibility filters, and validation rules to prevent bad data. ✅ Schedule regular deduplication and data enrichment. ✅ Monitor with reports crucial data. 4. Stop hoarding old reports and dashboards. → More reports don't mean more insights. → Too much clutter hides the valuable items. How to eliminate: ✅ Identify reports with zero recent views (LastViewedDate, LastRunDate fields). ✅ Consolidate duplicates and outdated dashboards. ✅ Move reports to folders Clean up your Salesforce org now. Future you will thank you. Which of these is the biggest issue in your org right now? --- Found this helpful? Like 👍 | Comment ✍ | Repost ♻️

Most Salesforce orgs are drowning in technical debt and they don't even know it. Here's the brutal truth: McKinsey found that 10-20% of tech budgets get diverted to fixing technical debt. In Salesforce terms? That's your innovation and GTM budget going straight to firefighting instead of growth. The paradox is real, the more successful your Salesforce implementation, the more debt you likely accumulate. What does Salesforce technical debt actually look like? It's not just messy code. It's: -Unused fields cluttering your objects -Multiple triggers without frameworks -Legacy Process Builders and Flows you're afraid to touch -Hard-coded IDs breaking when you least expect it -Duplicate records making your reports unreliable The compound effect is brutal. Just like credit card debt, technical debt grows exponentially. Developers spend 23-42% of their time firefighting instead of innovating. Performance suffers. User adoption drops. Costs skyrocket. Here's your way out: The CLEAR Methodology 1. Classify - Categorize debt by type and urgency 2. List - Create a detailed inventory 3. Evaluate - Assess cost vs. business value 4. Act - Implement in prioritized phases 5. Review - Monitor and prevent new accumulation Start with quick wins: Remove unused fields. Consolidate duplicate reports. Clean inactive users. These high-impact, low-effort moves build momentum. 2025 game-changer: AI-powered tech debt management Agentforce needs solid clean data and efficient processes. AI tools can now automate code analysis, predict maintenance needs, and suggest refactoring, turning debt management from reactive to proactive. The shift-left principle applies here: The earlier you identify debt, the cheaper it is to fix. Don't wait until your org becomes unmaintainable. What's your next step? Start to audit your Salesforce org today to assess how bad it is. Technical debt doesn't have to kill your Salesforce ROI. With the right strategy, transform your org from a source of frustration into a competitive advantage. What's your biggest Salesforce technical debt challenge right now? Drop a comment and share: - The debt that's causing you the most pain - A solution that's worked for your team - What's holding you back from tackling it Let's turn this comment section into a technical debt solutions exchange. Your experience could be exactly what someone else needs to hear. #Salesforce #TechnicalDebt #SalesforceAdmin #SalesforceDeveloper #CLEAR

How can I convince my leadership to prioritize Quality over Quantity? 👇🏼 I love this question that came in from Sreejin, one of my Level Up Software Engineering newsletter readers. Many of us can relate to feeling like feature work always gets prioritized over “clean code” or “addressing tech debt.” Here are two approaches I’ve seen and tried that don’t work ❌ Approach 1️⃣: “There’s a lot of tech debt in this area, it’s really bad.” Outcome: ❌ “Ok... unfortunately we don’t have time right now to work on that, we’ve got this big product launch we’ve got to focus on.” Approach 2️⃣: “We have a ton of tech debt in this codebase, we should tackle it soon. I filed these 5 tickets. Can you add them to an upcoming sprint?” Outcome: “Hey thanks for mentioning, we are super busy now… let’s try to fit it in near the end of this year when we are less busy.” Here’s a better approach I’ve seen that works ✅ Approach 3️⃣: “Hey, we’ve had 3 incidents in this area of our system. It’s actually causing one of our customers to be labeled as a churn risk. I’ve outlined several high-impact fixes in these 4 tickets that would give us the reliability and performance we need. We could knock it out in one dedicated sprint if we all rallied together on it. I know that would delay our Project X/Y/Z priority, but we should be able to still deliver it by the end of Q4 by cutting some scope here and here.” Outcome: ✅ “Wow, thanks for connecting the dots on all three incidents. I can see this needs to be a high priority. Next sprint is already filled, but let’s work together with our PM to refine this work and get it into the sprint after next!” The difference is developing your product/user/business sense. 🧠 You are connecting “quality” to real business value and impact, rather than just “clean code” or “tech debt” – which some leaders just hear as: “it works but it’s not the prettiest.” - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - What approaches have you used to advocate for quality? I’d love to hear from you in the comments. 🙋♀️🙋♂️ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - P.S. If you liked this post, you’ll probably love my weekly newsletter: https://lnkd.in/e8d5ymr3 

Most CTOs can't answer this question: "Where are we actually spending our engineering hours?" And that's a $10M+ blind spot. I was talking to a CTO recently who thought his team was spending 80% of their time on new features. Reality: They were spending 45% of their time on new features and 55% on technical debt, bug fixes, and unplanned work. That's not a developer problem. That's a business problem. When you don't have visibility into how code quality impacts your engineering investment, you can't make strategic decisions about where to focus. Here's what engineering leaders are starting to track: → Investment Hours by Category: How much time goes to features vs. debt vs. maintenance → Change Failure Rate Impact: What percentage of deployments require immediate fixes → Cycle Time Trends: How code quality affects your ability to deliver features quickly → Developer Focus Time: How much uninterrupted time developers get for strategic work The teams that measure this stuff are making data-driven decisions about technical debt prioritization. Instead of arguing about whether to "slow down and fix things," they're showing exactly how much fixing specific quality issues will accelerate future delivery. Quality isn't the opposite of speed. Poor quality is what makes you slow. But you can only optimize what you can measure. What metrics do you use to connect code quality to business outcomes? #EngineeringIntelligence #InvestmentHours #TechnicalDebt #EngineeringMetrics

You might as well be speaking “Klingon” Just dropped from a meeting where the IT Director provided his update to the leadership team. The c-level folks and non-technical leaders had no clue what he was talking about… From my experience this is the #1 mistake technical professionals make when meeting with business stakeholders I'll be blunt… business stakeholders don’t care about your technical architecture diagrams, your configuration details, or how cutting-edge your solution is. They care about outcomes. They care about results. They care about impact. BUT most technical professionals go into meetings armed with technical jargon & acronyms and leave the room wondering why no one bought in. If you’re presenting to business leaders, here’s the reality check… you are selling and you’re not selling technology - you’re selling business value. I don’t like to present a problem without a solution – so let’s try this… Step 1 Start every conversation by answering this “How does this solve a business problem?” If you have a technical solution that reduces costs, increases revenue, mitigates risk, or makes life easier for users, lead with that. Everything else is just details that nobody cares about. Step 2 Translate technical features into business benefits. Instead of saying, “We’re implementing zero trust,” say, “We’re reducing critical risks to our top revenue producing critical business functions.” Step 3 Stakeholders want to hear about how your solution will reduce downtime, increase productivity, save $$$, or improve client satisfaction. Make your impact measurable and relatable. Step 4 Can you reframe your message using an analogy or better yet a story. Numbers are great, but stories are sticky and resonate. Frame your solution in the context of a real-world scenario, like something stakeholders can visualize and connect with. Step 5 No one likes a squeaky wishy washy technical expert. Take a position, back it with evidence, and be clear about the path forward. Confidence inspires trust. Stop talking about the “how.” Start owning the “why.” And STOP speaking “Klingon” When you shift your focus to business value, you’ll see interest, buy-in, alignment, and support. #ciso #dpo #msp #leadership

I've seen companies lose millions in valuation once boards understood the depth of their tech debt. They judge the story your deck can defend. Two pages carry that story: Incident performance. Show the last 90 days of incidents and time to recover—a steady or improving trend signals control. Unexplained spikes signal exposure. Delivery capacity back to the roadmap. Report measurable gains after remediation: faster lead time for changes and a higher share of engineering time spent on new delivery. Microsoft's Secure Future Initiative serves as a useful benchmark for evidence: Microsoft removed 730,000 non-compliant applications and 5.75 million inactive tenants, thereby reducing the attack surface and operational risk. In Azure modernization programs, Microsoft also reports fewer downtime incidents and higher developer efficiency once brittle systems are retired and monitoring is tightened. That is the kind of operating proof that stands up with the audit & risk committee. If you have a review this quarter, build these two exhibits first: 1. Reliability trend: weekly incidents and recovery times, plus the highest-impact fixes shipped and their effect. 2. Throughput trend: the share of engineering time on new delivery, measured before and after a defined remediation window. This replaces status updates with evidence the room can trust. I explain how to collect these metrics with minimal overhead in this week's Simform newsletter. Link is in the comments.

Metrics that Tune Systems and Tame Technical Debt In the realm of software engineering, orchestrating success requires more than just coding prowess. Here are pivotal metrics to fine-tune your systems and tame technical debt: 1. Code Quality Metrics: Like artisans scrutinizing every brushstroke on a canvas, engineers analyze code complexity and duplication. Each line must harmonize to compose a masterpiece. 2. Test Coverage: Imagine automated tests as a safety net beneath a high-wire act. Comprehensive coverage ensures confident performances with each deployment. 3. Deployment Frequency: Picture an orchestra performing regularly—a testament to refined synchronization and delivery precision. 4. Mean Time to Detect (MTTD) and Mean Time to Resolve (MTTR): Fast responses to system issues prevent them from spreading like wildfires. Quick action extinguishes challenges before they engulf productivity. 5. Technical Debt Ratio: Like tending a garden, regular maintenance (refactoring) ensures weeds (inefficiencies) don't stifle growth. Pruning fosters a robust environment for innovation. 6. System Performance: Endurance akin to a marathon runner—monitoring response times and throughput sustains peak operational efficiency. 7. Sprint Burndown: A project fitness tracker—consistently meeting targets signifies disciplined progress towards sprint goals. 8. Customer Satisfaction (CSAT): A compass guiding software evolution—high scores validate user-centric enhancements, steering teams towards continuous improvement. Focusing on these metrics empowers engineering teams to cultivate resilient systems, navigate technical debt, and elevate product excellence. What metrics propel your team's success? #EngineeringMetrics #TechnicalDebt #SoftwareExcellence #ContinuousImprovement

You’re an engineering leader, a staff+ engineer, or a product owner who sees the cost of technical debt every day. But when you try to advocate for time to fix it, execs either nod vaguely or change the subject. You’re not wrong—you’re just not being heard. Here’s why that happens: When you say "tech debt," they hear "not urgent." When you say "refactor," they hear "money pit." When you say "architecture," they hear "someone else’s problem." But the reality is: Tech debt slows down your ability to ship new features. It increases the risk of outages or missed SLAs. It silently drives away your best engineers. So how do you make them care? I coach engineering and product leaders on how to frame technical priorities in business language—so they get the time, resources, and executive backing they need. Here’s the approach: Tie tech debt to business risk or cost: "This feature now takes 3x longer to ship because of X." Use executive language: Talk time-to-market, reliability, developer retention—not code quality. Frame it as an investment: "Fixing this sets us up for velocity in Q3." Make tradeoffs visible: "If we don’t fix this now, we’ll miss Y opportunity." Track real pain: Show data on cycle time, error rates, or turnover. Don’t wait for permission. If your leadership still sees tech debt as an engineering problem, it’s time to change the story you’re telling. This is where I come in. I help technical leaders communicate with power—bridging the gap between strategy and systems. Whether through coaching or fractional partnership, let’s get your org moving faster and smarter. #technicalleadership #engineeringmanagement #productstrategy #executivecommunication #startupgrowth