Best Practices for Refactoring to Reduce Tech Debt

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 Stop relying on outdated automation.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 ♻️

The 20% Rule for Technical Debt Here's my practical rule for handling technical debt without it overwhelming feature work: - If refactoring the "bad smell" takes 20% or less of your task time → do it. - If it's more than 20% → comment the code and add it to the backlog. This keeps us moving forward while gradually improving code quality. No permission needed for the small stuff, but we track the bigger items for proper prioritization. I also recommend teams allocate 20% of sprint capacity for tech debt and developer experience improvements. It's not rigid - some sprints might be 0%, others 50% - but it creates intentional space for improvement. The key insight: Technical debt isn't inherently bad. Unmanaged technical debt is. How do you balance feature delivery with keeping tech debt in check?