Skip to main content

Managing Technical Debt Plays Benefits Against Risks

Charles Caldwell
Logi Analytics

Everyone laments technical debt like it were a high-interest credit card. But just like how your CFO uses debt as capital for the business, the intelligent Product Manager knows that technical debt can help finance your path to market if you know how to manage it well.

Product managers who choose when and where it's acceptable to take on technical debt to overcome limited budget, constrained resources or critical deadlines, and budget their resources to resolve that debt at reasonable points in the future, avoid those nightmare scenarios. They recognize that taking on some debt can deliver real benefits so long as it's managed.

Finding the sweet spot between avoiding all technical debt and leveraging the right amount to get to market on a timeline that matters is a key skill for successful product teams.

Don't Build Too Little … or Too Much

Speed to market is a constant driver for product teams, with a high focus on feature delivery that can lead to an anemic architectural ramp. This is the source of technical debt that most teams are used to seeing. All the velocity is on features, and architecture "just happens" (or doesn't). Features are delivered that are not fully fleshed out, and the foundation they are built on won't support the actual feature requirements. While this is fine for an initial feature release to get feedback, repeated iterations result in a brittle product.

While a lot of technical debt comes from investing too little in supporting architecture, we see too many teams swing the other way and build far too much "infrastructure" upfront. Trying to anticipate everything a feature will ever need to do and build out the most beautifully architected backend for high-scale perfection before a single feature ships.

If the team is building too much enabling architecture at the onset, it's setting itself up for technical debt resulting from a change in requirements. Failing to get features out the door, the team doesn't get feedback until a lot of code is built. If you've got it wrong, you end up with a ton of technical debt in the form of an architecture that will never result in value to the customer.

There are, of course, feature sets that require a large amount of enabling technology. Features that have significant, complex components across multiple application tiers often resist iterative, MVP-style implementation. There are times when the MVP requires a lot of backend capability just to get the most basic version of the feature out the door. These are great cases for a buy/partner/open-source approach. Yes, you may accept some technical debt in the form of integration or "someone else's code," but if there is any risk around feature requirements, technical debt will pay dividends in the short term as you validate the feature. Place finite resources, including talent, toward solutions that could be resolved more efficiently by third-party options instead is another way technical debt mounts.

In the simplest term, reasonable technical debt is a trade-off. It's the result of identifying what's acceptable now that's worth addressing later. That's wholly manageable. What's unforeseen or overlooked that demands attention later is technical debt that every product manager wants to avoid.

To solve this and other varieties of technical debt, choose off-the-shelf options, either at the project's beginning or when they're needed. As noted above, embedded analytics allows managers to place solutions right into the development pipeline and move on. Time and talent spent focusing on other areas of the project offset the costs of buying a solution.

Debt Equilibrium

Technical debt is acceptable and even desired in some instances. When creating a genuinely trendsetting product, getting it to market as soon as feasible is the best way to obtain crucial user feedback. Addressing every possible way the new product will be used may be impossible to predict. So, creating an operational framework with simple, adaptable features that can be reliably built out into a compelling business solution for the client is a terrific way to identify and accept technical debt and leverage it for a project's benefit.

Identify technical debt and prepare for it to eliminate unpleasant surprises. Avoid it where possible and accept it where the benefits outweigh its drawbacks.

Manage and pay down debt by planning for it, choosing where and when it serves project purposes. This will ensure team momentum, the efficient delivery of products with state-of-the-art functionality, and expand the number of viable solutions to consider for addressing technical debt on projects in the future.

Charles Caldwell is VP of Product Management at Logi Analytics

Hot Topics

The Latest

According to Auvik's 2025 IT Trends Report, 60% of IT professionals feel at least moderately burned out on the job, with 43% stating that their workload is contributing to work stress. At the same time, many IT professionals are naming AI and machine learning as key areas they'd most like to upskill ...

Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

Image
Cloudbrink's Personal SASE services provide last-mile acceleration and reduction in latency

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 13, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses hybrid multi-cloud networking strategy ... 

In high-traffic environments, the sheer volume and unpredictable nature of network incidents can quickly overwhelm even the most skilled teams, hindering their ability to react swiftly and effectively, potentially impacting service availability and overall business performance. This is where closed-loop remediation comes into the picture: an IT management concept designed to address the escalating complexity of modern networks ...

In 2025, enterprise workflows are undergoing a seismic shift. Propelled by breakthroughs in generative AI (GenAI), large language models (LLMs), and natural language processing (NLP), a new paradigm is emerging — agentic AI. This technology is not just automating tasks; it's reimagining how organizations make decisions, engage customers, and operate at scale ...

In the early days of the cloud revolution, business leaders perceived cloud services as a means of sidelining IT organizations. IT was too slow, too expensive, or incapable of supporting new technologies. With a team of developers, line of business managers could deploy new applications and services in the cloud. IT has been fighting to retake control ever since. Today, IT is back in the driver's seat, according to new research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) ...

In today's fast-paced and increasingly complex network environments, Network Operations Centers (NOCs) are the backbone of ensuring continuous uptime, smooth service delivery, and rapid issue resolution. However, the challenges faced by NOC teams are only growing. In a recent study, 78% state network complexity has grown significantly over the last few years while 84% regularly learn about network issues from users. It is imperative we adopt a new approach to managing today's network experiences ...

Image
Broadcom

From growing reliance on FinOps teams to the increasing attention on artificial intelligence (AI), and software licensing, the Flexera 2025 State of the Cloud Report digs into how organizations are improving cloud spend efficiency, while tackling the complexities of emerging technologies ...

Managing Technical Debt Plays Benefits Against Risks

Charles Caldwell
Logi Analytics

Everyone laments technical debt like it were a high-interest credit card. But just like how your CFO uses debt as capital for the business, the intelligent Product Manager knows that technical debt can help finance your path to market if you know how to manage it well.

Product managers who choose when and where it's acceptable to take on technical debt to overcome limited budget, constrained resources or critical deadlines, and budget their resources to resolve that debt at reasonable points in the future, avoid those nightmare scenarios. They recognize that taking on some debt can deliver real benefits so long as it's managed.

Finding the sweet spot between avoiding all technical debt and leveraging the right amount to get to market on a timeline that matters is a key skill for successful product teams.

Don't Build Too Little … or Too Much

Speed to market is a constant driver for product teams, with a high focus on feature delivery that can lead to an anemic architectural ramp. This is the source of technical debt that most teams are used to seeing. All the velocity is on features, and architecture "just happens" (or doesn't). Features are delivered that are not fully fleshed out, and the foundation they are built on won't support the actual feature requirements. While this is fine for an initial feature release to get feedback, repeated iterations result in a brittle product.

While a lot of technical debt comes from investing too little in supporting architecture, we see too many teams swing the other way and build far too much "infrastructure" upfront. Trying to anticipate everything a feature will ever need to do and build out the most beautifully architected backend for high-scale perfection before a single feature ships.

If the team is building too much enabling architecture at the onset, it's setting itself up for technical debt resulting from a change in requirements. Failing to get features out the door, the team doesn't get feedback until a lot of code is built. If you've got it wrong, you end up with a ton of technical debt in the form of an architecture that will never result in value to the customer.

There are, of course, feature sets that require a large amount of enabling technology. Features that have significant, complex components across multiple application tiers often resist iterative, MVP-style implementation. There are times when the MVP requires a lot of backend capability just to get the most basic version of the feature out the door. These are great cases for a buy/partner/open-source approach. Yes, you may accept some technical debt in the form of integration or "someone else's code," but if there is any risk around feature requirements, technical debt will pay dividends in the short term as you validate the feature. Place finite resources, including talent, toward solutions that could be resolved more efficiently by third-party options instead is another way technical debt mounts.

In the simplest term, reasonable technical debt is a trade-off. It's the result of identifying what's acceptable now that's worth addressing later. That's wholly manageable. What's unforeseen or overlooked that demands attention later is technical debt that every product manager wants to avoid.

To solve this and other varieties of technical debt, choose off-the-shelf options, either at the project's beginning or when they're needed. As noted above, embedded analytics allows managers to place solutions right into the development pipeline and move on. Time and talent spent focusing on other areas of the project offset the costs of buying a solution.

Debt Equilibrium

Technical debt is acceptable and even desired in some instances. When creating a genuinely trendsetting product, getting it to market as soon as feasible is the best way to obtain crucial user feedback. Addressing every possible way the new product will be used may be impossible to predict. So, creating an operational framework with simple, adaptable features that can be reliably built out into a compelling business solution for the client is a terrific way to identify and accept technical debt and leverage it for a project's benefit.

Identify technical debt and prepare for it to eliminate unpleasant surprises. Avoid it where possible and accept it where the benefits outweigh its drawbacks.

Manage and pay down debt by planning for it, choosing where and when it serves project purposes. This will ensure team momentum, the efficient delivery of products with state-of-the-art functionality, and expand the number of viable solutions to consider for addressing technical debt on projects in the future.

Charles Caldwell is VP of Product Management at Logi Analytics

Hot Topics

The Latest

According to Auvik's 2025 IT Trends Report, 60% of IT professionals feel at least moderately burned out on the job, with 43% stating that their workload is contributing to work stress. At the same time, many IT professionals are naming AI and machine learning as key areas they'd most like to upskill ...

Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

Image
Cloudbrink's Personal SASE services provide last-mile acceleration and reduction in latency

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 13, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses hybrid multi-cloud networking strategy ... 

In high-traffic environments, the sheer volume and unpredictable nature of network incidents can quickly overwhelm even the most skilled teams, hindering their ability to react swiftly and effectively, potentially impacting service availability and overall business performance. This is where closed-loop remediation comes into the picture: an IT management concept designed to address the escalating complexity of modern networks ...

In 2025, enterprise workflows are undergoing a seismic shift. Propelled by breakthroughs in generative AI (GenAI), large language models (LLMs), and natural language processing (NLP), a new paradigm is emerging — agentic AI. This technology is not just automating tasks; it's reimagining how organizations make decisions, engage customers, and operate at scale ...

In the early days of the cloud revolution, business leaders perceived cloud services as a means of sidelining IT organizations. IT was too slow, too expensive, or incapable of supporting new technologies. With a team of developers, line of business managers could deploy new applications and services in the cloud. IT has been fighting to retake control ever since. Today, IT is back in the driver's seat, according to new research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) ...

In today's fast-paced and increasingly complex network environments, Network Operations Centers (NOCs) are the backbone of ensuring continuous uptime, smooth service delivery, and rapid issue resolution. However, the challenges faced by NOC teams are only growing. In a recent study, 78% state network complexity has grown significantly over the last few years while 84% regularly learn about network issues from users. It is imperative we adopt a new approach to managing today's network experiences ...

Image
Broadcom

From growing reliance on FinOps teams to the increasing attention on artificial intelligence (AI), and software licensing, the Flexera 2025 State of the Cloud Report digs into how organizations are improving cloud spend efficiency, while tackling the complexities of emerging technologies ...