Maintenance can represent 50–75% of a solution's total cost — yet technical debt rarely becomes a real business priority.
While browsing LinkedIn recently, I came across an article by @nventive, a Montreal-based fintech, on the real cost of maintaining digital systems. That figure may sound extreme — but it's a reality many of us in DevOps, security, and platform engineering recognize. The real problem isn't debt itself: it's our inability to communicate it in language stakeholders act on.
At a glance
- Technical debt slows teams but rarely becomes a business priority without clear metrics
- Thresholds, DORA metrics (software delivery performance benchmarks), and continuous tracking change the conversation with leadership
- Frame maintenance as investment in agility, not burden
- Linking debt to unplanned work makes the cost of inaction visible
Yes, technical debt hurts — but that's not the problem
Everyone in tech has felt technical debt's impact. It slows teams, increases bugs, delays features, and makes deployments riskier. Yet it rarely becomes a real business priority. That gap — not the debt itself — is the problem.
Why is buy-in so hard?
We often fail to communicate impact in language stakeholders respond to. No project manager will say:
"Hey team, take the next three sprints to fix technical debt."
We're pressured to deliver visible value — so debt cleanup stays at the bottom of the backlog. Engineers talk refactoring; leaders hear "no new features." Without a shared picture of cost, debt stays invisible until production breaks.
What can we do about it?
Tech debt is inevitable. But we can manage it better:
| Action | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Define clear thresholds | Know what's acceptable vs a red flag |
| Track with metrics | Bugs, lead time, change failure rate |
| Leverage DORA metrics | Make the cost of inaction visible |
| Signal | What it tells stakeholders |
|---|---|
| Rising defect volume | Quality eroding; customer trust at risk |
| Longer lead time for changes | Innovation slowing; competitors gaining |
| Higher change failure rate | Risky releases; firefighting increases |
| Slow recovery time | Outages cost revenue and reputation |
With the right data, conversations improve. In organizations I've supported, the turning point comes when debt is linked to unplanned work — hours lost firefighting instead of innovating.
Concrete example: translating debt into business language
An IT director once presented "847 debt points in Jira." Leadership nodded politely and moved on. The next week, the same person showed: "Each deployment now takes four hours instead of 45 minutes — our two best developers spend every third Friday firefighting." The conversation changed overnight.
That wasn't manipulation. It was an honest translation between technical language and business priorities.
Maintenance isn't just a cost — it's an investment
If we treat maintenance as a burden, we'll never fix the problem. When we frame it as an investment in long-term agility, we unlock more sustainable delivery and happier teams.
Teams that manage debt well treat it like any other backlog: prioritized, measured, tied to business outcomes — not a side project that only happens when things catch fire.
Three moves for your next leadership review
- Pick one signal (lead time, change failure rate, firefighting hours) and show the six-month trend
- Link it to one business irritant leadership already recognizes
- Propose one targeted payback with estimated effort and gain — not a vague "cleanup program"
I originally shared this perspective on LinkedIn. The discipline stays the same: measure, translate, prioritize.
Where you are
After Technical debt and unplanned work, you know how to measure reactive load. Next: Map friction before buying tools closes this series by turning those insights into concrete action.
If you've faced similar challenges, Let's work on the message — how to make tech debt visible to the people who control priorities.