Understand the true risk of technical debt in your business

TL;DR

Technical debt is pure risk with no upside, leading to lost time, reduced agility, and missed opportunities. Microsoft’s experience shows that unchecked technical debt can severely slow delivery, but addressing it directly restores speed and flexibility. Development managers should treat technical debt as a critical business issue and take proactive steps to reduce it.

24 April 2025
Written by Martin Hinshelwood
1 minute read
Capability Engineering Excellence
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If your business truly understood the risk of technical debt, you wouldn’t accept any of it.

There’s a myth that “some level of technical debt is manageable.” But let’s be clear, technical debt is 100% risk. It’s an unhedged fund with no asset securing it, no insurance to mitigate it. The cost isn’t just in future refactoring; it’s in lost time, lost agility, and lost opportunities.

At Microsoft, TFS was delivered on a two-year cycle. By 2012, with 600 engineers, they were shipping just 24 features a year. Technical debt had turned a powerhouse into a bottleneck. It wasn’t until they embraced 3-week Sprints and tackled the underlying debt that they regained agility.

This isn’t just an engineering problem. It’s a business problem. If you think you can hide technical debt in a cost centre forever, think again.

How does your organisation treat technical debt? As a calculated risk or an unrecognised liability?

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