How to plan for technical debt before it buries you

In the fast-moving world of software development, taking shortcuts isn’t unusual. It’s often a deliberate part of getting things done quickly. You want to release that feature quickly, patch that bug before the demo, or just get the MVP out the door. The problem is that every shortcut has a cost. And that cost is what we call technical debt.

If you’re in the thick of product development, you’ve probably already felt the weight of technical debt. It may be in the form of spaghetti code, slow delivery cycles, or systems that no one dares to touch. When technical debt starts getting in the way of progress, companies often bring in external experts to assess and rebuild. As Dmitry Nazarevich, CTO at Innowise, puts it: “Technical debt isn’t just a code problem; it’s a structural issue that reflects decisions made under pressure. The longer it’s left unaddressed, the more it limits scalability, performance, and delivery speed.”

Let’s find out how to recognize, manage, and proactively plan for technical debt before it becomes a business blocker.

What is technical debt, really? 

In short, it’s the accumulation of code or design compromises that help you move fast in the short term but create problems down the road. It’s like borrowing money. You get something now, but eventually, you have to pay interest.

Not all technical debt is bad. In fact, sometimes it’s intentional and necessary. But just like financial debt, if you ignore it for too long, it’ll grow into something painful.

Why it becomes a problem 

Imagine your dev team is pushing out features. But each release takes longer and introduces more bugs. Suddenly, onboarding new developers becomes a nightmare. Moreover, your system becomes harder to maintain with every passing sprint.

This is technical debt in action. Whether you build in-house or partner with a firm, the key is planning for debt before it gets out of control. So, what do you do?

Steps you need to take  #1 Recognize the signs early

You can easily get into tech debt if you don’t know what sends signals. Some red flags include:

• Code that no one wants to touch because it’s too fragile;
• Fixing one thing constantly breaks something else;
• The same bugs keep popping up;
• Adding new features takes longer than it should;
• Developer burnout from constant firefighting.

Whenever any of these sounds familiar, then that’s it. You’ve got some debt on your hands.

#2 Make it visible

A common mistake many teams make is treating technical debt as something abstract or intangible. But if you’re not tracking it, you can’t manage or fix it. You should start by doing the following:

• Tag technical debt in your backlog;
• Log issues as they’re discovered in code reviews;
• Keep a running list of “quick fixes” and architectural trade-offs;
• Use robust tools to highlight problem areas.

If you do this, it’ll become more visible. In the end, it’ll become easier to manage it.

#3 Prioritize strategically

All debts differ. Some issues are minor nuisances, while others are full-blown risks to your platform.

Here’s an easy way to sort them:

1. High-interest debt. If it slows development or breaks often, you should fix it ASAP;
2. Medium-interest. If it causes some delays, you should plan to handle it during normal sprints;
3. Low-interest. If it’s harmless but annoying, you should make a note and deal with it later.

You should work with your product managers to decide what’s worth fixing now and what can wait. It’s all about finding the right balance.

#4 Integrate debt management into the workflow

You shouldn’t treat tech debt like something you’ll get to later. You should treat it as part of your delivery process. Here are some tips:

• Allocate 10–20% of every sprint to debt reduction;
• Schedule quarterly “debt cleanup” sprints;
• Include debt discussions in retrospectives;
• Give engineers room to refactor as part of feature development.

Such an approach will prevent it from becoming a crisis.

#5 Empower your team

Take a look at your development team. Do they often raise concerns, or do they rush to finish tasks on time just to avoid being reprimanded? There should be a culture where developers feel comfortable about flagging and addressing technical debt.

Companies integrate different approaches to raising such a culture. Some companies encourage code reviews that call out poor patterns and celebrate improvements and refactoring wins. Other companies include technical quality as a KPI. Moreover, it wouldn’t hurt to provide time for mentorship.

#6 Communicate with non-tech stakeholders

Saying “We need a sprint to reduce tech debt” doesn’t always fly with leadership. Sometimes you just need to translate technical debt into business language. Here are some great tactics to make everyone aware of issues and encourage them to take action:

• “Fixing this will reduce bugs by 40%”
• “This change will speed up future releases by 30%”
• “We’re currently spending 20 hours/week patching the same issue. This will stop that”

Executives might not be well-versed in technical jargon. However, if they see how tech debt impacts delivery and customer experience, they will be more likely to support you. You can use data from your backlog, velocity reports, or QA metrics to paint a clear picture.

With planning, you can stay in control

No codebase is perfect. Technical debt will always exist in some form. However, by planning for it, you can stay in control. All in all, you should track it, prioritize it, and build space for it. Moreover, you can bring in expert partners to help design smarter systems from the ground up. In the end, managing technical debt isn’t just about cleaning up your code. It’s about protecting your team’s time, your product’s integrity, and your business’s future.