How to Reduce Technical Debt & Rescue a Failing Project

Technical debt, a tradeoff between quality and speed, is a part of software development. However, businesses should strive to reduce technical debt in their projects, especially mid-sized ones and startups struggling with delayed or failing projects.

 

Effective technical debt management correlates with higher revenue growth, whereas unaddressed tech debt issues may affect a business’s agility, costs, and competitiveness.

 

As an outsourced software development partner with rescue expertise, Onix is dealing with technical debt in two ways:

1) When developing products for our clients, our software engineers adhere to set coding standards and other technical debt best practices to prevent future issues.

 

2) When we step into projects or conduct project audits, issues are already present, so we investigate the causes, such as unclear project requirements or problematic code, and determine how to improve code quality and reduce technical debt without halting growth.

From this article, you will learn
 

• What causes technical debt and what issues it causes for your business 
• How to avoid technical debt accumulation
• How to identify, assess, and reduce tech debt without starting over the project
• How Onix can help you move from stalled development to recovery 

 

What Causes Technical Debt in Software Projects?

Ward Cunningham coined the term "technical debt" in 1992, referring to the cost of rework and additional work resulting from a quick and dirty approach to software development.

 

For example, programmers may sometimes become sloppy with in-code annotations to expedite development. However, when they reference the code later, they’ll spend more time interpreting what they did before.

Like with finances, tech debt accumulates interest over time, requiring extra effort to add new features, increased maintenance, etc.

Since 1992, the term has transcended code. Any part of an enterprise system may accumulate technical debt: infrastructure, architecture, or processes that haven’t been adapted to modern technologies. 

Some of the causes of technical debt include:

 

• Tight project schedules or urgent demands that pressure developers to take shortcuts
• Temporary solutions or quick fixes that are eventually forgotten and linger in the codebase
• Neglecting coding standards and code quality
• Insufficient testing, such as incomplete test suites, truncated testing, no automation, or skipping testing altogether
• Changing business goals and project requirements and emerging cyber threats rendering even well-designed code and solutions obsolete or incompatible
• Technologies that easily become outdated and postponing upgrades
• Lack of knowledge or skills in the product development team
• Developer turnover or poor technological leadership and collaboration

Based on the reasons, Steve McConnell categorized technical debt as

 

1) Intentional tech debt — a result of optimizing for the present. The consequences of choosing the easiest solution or using a framework with known limitations to meet a deadline are intentional technical debt examples.

 

2) Unintentional tech debt — consequences of poor design, the introduction of new features, oversight, failure to follow development standards, etc.

 

 

The Importance of Managing and Reducing Technical Debt on Time 

Ward Cunningham explained: “A little debt speeds development so long as it is paid back promptly with refactoring. The danger occurs when the debt is not repaid.” The longer it takes to repay, the harder it becomes to manage.

 

What are the risks of late or inadequate tech debt reduction? Here are just a few:

 

• Slower product delivery due to developers losing time on bug fixes, workarounds, and navigating complex or outdated code
• Errors and inefficiencies resulting from developers’ struggle with inadequate or outdated documentation
• Increased risk of failures leading to performance degradation, instability, and costly downtime
• Security vulnerabilities caused by outdated technologies and unpatched weaknesses
• Poor user experience resulting from bugs, slow performance, and degraded product quality
• Loss of customers who abandon glitchy, unreliable, underperforming, inconvenient, or increasingly costly software
• Reduced scalability due to the struggle to accommodate new features, integrate with modern systems, or handle growing user bases
• Stifled innovation because issues divert resources from building new value
• Reduced ability of the product to compete and respond to shifting market conditions
• Higher long-term costs from rework, delayed delivery, extra workforce, and increased support needs
• Lower morale and productivity and higher turnover of developers, who are continuously frustrated with rework and hard-to-maintain code

Since most technical debt is unintentional, identifying it is the first step toward reducing it. 

 

If you’re working with legacy code, you’re most likely dealing with technical debt. So did Onix’s offshore team when they started working for Learning Pool, a big eLearning solutions provider. 

 

For example, reviewing a video streaming and hosting service with elements of machine learning, our senior developer detected a problem in production related to payments. Closing off that bug significantly improved the user experience. 

 

The developer also structured the existing code and improved the format of code writing.

 

Due to the numerous prior iterations and changes to the codebase, a significant amount of work was devoted to addressing potential memory leaks and other areas that required optimization. One task involved updating more than 1,000 files and resulted in over 2GB of RAM being reclaimed.

 

Another senior developer reviewed a large data warehouse and identified and fixed every leak without compromising a single other element.

 

This is just one example of technical debt reduction by Onix’s experts. You are welcome to explore more in our portfolio and book a consultation to learn how we can enhance your product and processes.

 

How much technical debt does your product carry? Request a free audit from Onix’s tech team!

 

Onix’s experience with hundreds of projects across many industries also enables us to share practical recommendations on how to reduce tech debt.

Technical Debt Management and Reduction Strategies

There are two approaches to managing technical debt:

 

1. repaying existing tech debt
2. preventing technical debt from accumulating

 

Preventing technical debt is easier and more cost-efficient than resolving it later. Onix has embedded quality, maintainability, and knowledge transfer into its workflow and recommends that all teams adopt this approach from the outset of a software development project.

Regarding existing technical debt, our activities may range from urgent temporary fixes to refactoring the entire codebase.  

 

Read also: How to Rescue a Failing Software Project

 

Let’s start with tech debt remediation techniques and tips.

 

How to Reduce Technical Debt without Stopping Delivery?

 

Step 1. Identify and classify your technical debt

Technical debt remediation starts with identifying the type of tech debt at hand, such as:

 

• Documentation debt: missing or outdated documentation
• Code debt: consequences of shortcuts or suboptimal decisions during programming
• Design debt: flaws in the user interface (UI) or user experience (UX)
• Architecture debt: dependencies, dead code, and aging frameworks 
• Infrastructure debt: problems with the underlying systems
• Build debt: issues complicating the build process
• Human debt: lack of necessary skills in the team
• AI debt: complexities spanning the data and model governance life cycle 

 

Different types of technical debt require different remediation actions. For example, if failures are caused by human debt, product team augmentation or even vendor replacement may solve the problem.

 

In this and other cases, it makes good sense to delegate a project audit to an external team. For example, Onix’s experts can help you identify hidden issues, find out what causes technical debt, measure it, prioritize tasks, and resolve all types of tech debt.

 

Here are some of the benefits of reducing technical debt with Onix:

 

• We will utilize AI-powered solutions to review your codebase and pinpoint areas of problematic code.
• After a comprehensive tech debt audit, we will highlight issues posing the highest risk and complexity, prioritizing the areas to refactor first.  
• Our experts will provide a roadmap and actionable insights to guide remediation efforts. 
• We also use AI tools to automate refactoring, saving time and minimizing errors.
• Our outsourcing agency’s fees are very appealing.

Step 2. Plan and track your tech debt pay-offs

It’s recommended to repay tech debt piece by piece, rather than rush to eliminate it at once. Divide the identified tech debt into more and less severe issues.

 

Create a technical debt inventory and rank the tasks by their impact and urgency. Tracking tools like Azure Board, GitHub Issues, or Jira will ensure visibility and control.

 

In cases of major issues, such as app crashes or UX problems affecting online sales, call all hands on deck. For less severe issues, schedule dedicated days or hours to resolve known issues, add notations, or refactor the code.

 

Backlog all incomplete or deferred tasks, prioritize, and complete them.  

 

Some of the metrics by which you can measure your technical debt reduction or growth are

 

• tech debt density (cost per line of code)
• number of new bugs per week or month
• number of new bugs versus closed bugs
• bug frequency
• time-to-fix
• defect density
• number of failed CD/CI pipelines
• rule violations
• cyclomatic complexity
• code coverage percentage
• code coverage per feature
• SQALE-rating

 

Step 3. Implement measures, changes, and solutions to reduce technical debt

Refactoring is one of the essential methods of managing tech debt. It involves restructuring and simplifying existing code without changing what it does.

 

For example, Ryan Rosenbaum of Phlex Sports Co wrote about Onix’s work: “Post-refactoring, the codebase became maintainable and scalable, leading to a 30% reduction in bug reports related to legacy code problems. Through proactive bug fixing, the number of critical post-launch issues was reduced by 35%, resulting in a smooth UX and fewer support requests.”

If you are refactoring code or configuration, automated testing is critical. For example, Onix uses AI-powered testing tools to catch issues early and twice as fast. The AI-powered Snyk helps scan code for security issues.

 

In addition to refactoring or rewriting modules for its clients, Onix often

 

• improves database structures
• modernizes legacy systems while minimizing the risk of new bugs or regressions  
• updates frameworks
• prioritizes and re-scopes features
• plans AI integration to give an edge to products
• aligns projects with the clients’ business goals 

 

For example, as Learning Pool’s technology stack had come together over 20 years, its legacy code posed a major challenge. Onix’s developers updated all technologies employed in LP’s projects to more convenient new versions.

 

Onix’s expert also completely rewrote the query builder, which required significant updates to the UX and removed substantial technical debt. Another developer optimized many queries that were not initially designed for the large number of users LP acquired over the years.

 

Our team also covered the entire project with tests. 

 

These examples demonstrate that we at Onix know how to cope with difficult tech debt cases. However, sometimes, tech debt and issues may escalate to the point where rewriting the product from scratch is more effective than further tech debt reduction efforts.

 

Onix does that too! You are welcome to check out the InnerVR game/meditation app, Bracketology (America’s #1 reality TV fantasy gaming website!), and other case studies. 

 

However, it’s still advisable to consistently manage technical debt in a way that prevents crises.

 

Preventing and Managing Technical Debt: Best Practices

Technical debt prevention and management require a comprehensive approach that focuses on best practices in software development and high standards of code quality and security. 

 

Here are Onix’s top-10 recommendations.

 

Plan wisely

It’s essential to research the target audiences’ needs, customer expectations, competition, and the domain’s regulations and other specifics before writing a single line of code. Research, analyze, and document the project requirements accurately and thoroughly. 

 

Plan for interoperability, future growth, and integration capabilities.  

 

Read also: Why and How to Achieve Interoperability in Healthcare IT

 

Focus on code quality

Ensuring high quality starts with establishing clear coding standards and defining "Done" as “completely covered with automated tests and ready to release.” Establish consistent coding guidelines, and adopt strong security protocols from the beginning.

 

Regular code reviews are equally essential. Peer reviews and pair programming help catch bugs, typos, edge cases, and design issues early on.

 

Implement effective testing

Test-driven development is one of the best ways to prevent technical debt accumulation. Teams that write tests before implementation fully validate every feature from the start.

 

Automation of the unit, integration, and end-to-end testing enables frequent test runs that catch bugs early. Automated tests also help detect regressions introduced during refactoring or new feature development. When a bug is discovered, an automatic test that reproduces the issue will ensure it doesn’t return unnoticed.

 

Implement continuous integration and deployment practices

CI/CD pipelines enable teams to identify regressions promptly and maintain high quality. Static analysis tools integrated into your CI/CD pipeline will flag issues early and enforce consistency. 

 

A DevOps culture and environment are also beneficial in preventing the accumulation of tech debt.

Comprehensive documentation and knowledge sharing

Maintain clear, up-to-date documentation, including architectural decisions, APIs, and diagrams. This helps ensure continuity, streamlines debugging, reduces errors, facilitates maintenance, and helps identify areas that may require refactoring.

 

A source control system providing a history of changes and explanations can be valuable.

 

Reinforce these with regular meetings or knowledge-sharing sessions for all team members. 

 

Embed refactoring into your development process

Make code reviews and refactoring a routine. The entire team must understand its importance and the benefits it offers.

 

There is always a place and reason for refactoring, but it’s essential to do it in the right places and at the right time. Focus on continuous small improvements; apply best-practice patterns and simplify naming and structure. Branching the codebase may be beneficial too.

 

Modularize your architecture: modular architectures facilitate technical debt management by reducing tight coupling, enhancing code organization, and reducing complexity.

 

Address technical debt proactively

Include addressing tech debt in the definition of “Done.” Merge tech debt, new feature tasks, and bug fixes into a single backlog for holistic prioritization during development cycles.

Plan a structured approach to technical debt repayment and reserve 10–20% of each development sprint (or more, based on severity) for pay-offs. Hold quarterly “debt sprints” focused solely on refactoring, bug fixes, and stabilization.

 

Accenture’s research revealed that leading companies allocate about 15% of their IT budgets to technical debt remediation, especially for new projects. This approach balances debt reduction with strategic innovations.

 

Adopt Agile methods

The Agile approach, with its frequent iterations, bug fixes, and feature delivery, enables teams to address technical debt on an ongoing basis.

 
Agile defines “Done” as ready to release and incorporates quality into the development approach. If needed, teams should reduce the scope of the release, but not compromise quality. They use automated testing, continuous integration, and feature branching workflows.

 

The main branch of the codebase must always be ready for release. New features originate from a task branch that contains code for the feature, along with automated tests. Once the feature is complete and the tests pass, developers can merge the branch into the main branch. This also keeps technology debt under control.

 

Stay up-to-date technology-wise

Regularly update the libraries and frameworks you use to minimize risks associated with outdated dependencies. Invest in new programming technology, including AI-assisted coding, and stay abreast of technology trends. Integrate only those solutions those that align with your business goals and regulatory requirements.

 

 

According to Forrester’s 2025 technology and security predictions, 75% of technology decision-makers expected their technical debt to rise to a moderate or high level of severity. To stem that tsunami, they were planning to triple the adoption of AI for IT operations platforms that enhance human judgment, remediate incidents, and improve business outcomes.

 

Read also: AI Agents: Examples, Use Cases, and Development Basics

 

AI-powered testing and coding agents show promise in reducing technical debt. AI testing tools automate repetitive testing tasks and detect issues early. AI coding agents can actually understand an entire codebase and system and refactor code with best practices in mind.

 

Address skills gaps

If you have implemented all of the above and still don’t know how to reduce technical debt, could your team be the problem?

 

It’s essential to assess your programmers’ skills and address gaps through continuous training, mentoring, or pairing junior programmers with more experienced devs.

If you want faster results and greater efficiency, you may need developers skilled in rescuing projects and managing tech debt.

For example, Onix prides itself on 

 

• 100% of project rescue workflows enhanced by AI
• 95% of clients saying we uncovered issues their previous team missed
• 87% of rescue audits leading to vendor change within 10 days
• 82% of clients returning with new projects
• 3+ years average client retention

Wrapping Up

Technical debt is unavoidable, but with Agile practices, effective technical debt reduction techniques, and preventative strategies, teams and organizations can accelerate software development, innovate, and deliver high-quality products.

 

If your team is struggling with technical debt or other issues, Onix may be just what you need! Our experts know how to improve code quality, design, architecture, user experience, performance, and other aspects of your software.

 

Book a consultation now, start the change today, and let professionals manage your technical debt while you focus on creating value and business growth.   

 

FAQ

 

Can technical debt be eliminated?

No, it is impossible to eliminate technical debt or to avoid it entirely. 

 

Is technical debt always bad?

No. Sometimes, the code’s quality isn’t critical, but a deadline is. For example, minimum viable products (MVPs) usually come with code debt, but it’s not a problem as long as it is resolved in a timely manner. Technical debt in prototypes, experimental projects, and systems approaching termination or migration to a new system isn’t worth paying off.

How do I decide which tech debt to address first?

You can evaluate technical debt issues based on their severity, urgency, and impact on your business. High-severity and high-impact issues require immediate remediation. High-impact but low-severity issues should be addressed in the next sprint.

 

Is there a rule of thumb for managing technical debt?

Yes. The 80/20 rule promotes a balance between the development of new features and tech debt reduction: 80% of sprint time and resources should be dedicated to new features and technologies, and 20% to debt reduction or management. 

 

How to measure technical debt?

The go-to metrics for measuring tech debt are the number of bugs and the number of failed CD/CI pipelines.