Deepak Gupta

Posted on Sep 17

Managing Tech Debt: Engineering Practices for Sustainable Systems

#programming #webdev #sustainability #architecture

TL;DR

This post explores how software teams can recognize, prioritize, and fix technical debt before scaling applications. We’ll cover strategies like refactoring, CI/CD test coverage, and architecture reviews to ensure developers don’t build “castles” on unstable foundations.

Introduction
Why Tech Debt Matters to Developers
Identifying Debt in Your Codebase
Practical Strategies for Paying Down Debt
- Refactoring Approaches
- Automated Testing and CI/CD Integration
- Architectural Reviews and Documentation
Discussion Point
Engineering Challenges in Debt Reduction
Steps to Sustainable Development
Conclusion

Introduction

Every developer has worked in a codebase where deadlines trump design. Over time, small compromises accumulate into technical debt—messy abstractions, duplicated logic, missing tests—that slow down feature delivery and introduce bugs.

For engineers, this isn’t a management buzzword. Tech debt is very real: it drags build pipelines, complicates debugging, and makes scaling painful. Ignoring it is like adding floors to a building before reinforcing the foundation.

Why Tech Debt Matters to Developers

Unlike product features, technical debt is often invisible to stakeholders but painfully obvious to developers. Some real-world developer headaches caused by tech debt:

Flaky tests slowing CI/CD pipelines
Monolithic files stuffed with business logic
Outdated dependencies that can’t be upgraded without breakage
Core modules no one wants to touch for fear of breaking everything

Fixing it early prevents the cost of change from ballooning later.

Identifying Debt in Your Codebase

Tech debt reveals itself through patterns developers hate:

Long Build Times – Your CI pipeline takes 30 minutes, discouraging frequent commits.
God Classes & Spaghetti Code – A single module handles authentication, payment, and logging logic.
Lack of Test Coverage – Engineers fear modifying “legacy” files due to zero safety net.
Repeated Bugs – Patches on top of patches with no root-cause fix.

A lightweight approach is to tag code smells explicitly during code review and track them in backlog tools like Jira or Linear.

Practical Strategies for Paying Down Debt

Refactoring Approaches

Refactoring isn’t rewriting. It’s incremental improvement:

# Example: Refactoring a procedural snippet into cleaner abstractions

# Before
def process_payment(order):
    # authenticate user
    if not user.is_authenticated():
        raise Exception("Unauthorized")
    # calculate tax
    tax = order.amount * 0.08
    # apply discount
    if order.user.is_premium:
        discount = 20
    else:
        discount = 0
    final = order.amount + tax - discount
    return final

# After: Separation of concerns
class PaymentProcessor:
    def __init__(self, tax_service, discount_service):
        self.tax_service = tax_service
        self.discount_service = discount_service

    def process(self, order):
        tax = self.tax_service.calculate(order.amount)
        discount = self.discount_service.apply(order.user)
        return order.amount + tax - discount

Automated Testing and CI/CD Integration

Tech debt thrives without safety nets. Start with:

Unit tests for critical paths
Regression test suites integrated into CI/CD
Static code analysis (e.g., SonarQube, ESLint, PyLint)

This ensures every commit chips away at instability instead of adding more debt.

Architectural Reviews and Documentation

Schedule lightweight architecture roundtables where developers discuss:

Why modules exist
Which dependencies can be replaced
Whether folder structure matches current business needs

Documentation can be living — stored alongside code in Markdown rather than bloated PDFs.

Discussion Point

How do you balance delivering features quickly versus blocking releases until debt is addressed? Do you adopt “tech debt sprints” or embed fixes inside every feature PR?

Engineering Challenges in Debt Reduction

Management Buy-In – Engineers may want to refactor, but leadership often wants new features. Solving this requires communicating in cost terms: "30 min CI slowdown = 5 dev hours wasted daily."
Avoiding Rewrite Temptation – Rewrites often introduce new debt. Incremental fixes win.
Legacy Systems – Debt piles up in critical, revenue-driving systems that can’t risk downtime. Strategy: add tests before any refactor.

Steps to Sustainable Development

Define coding standards enforced via linters/pre-commit hooks.
Treat tests as first-class citizens in any feature branch.
Track debt items like features — with points, priority, and owners.
Allocate explicit 20% engineering time for debt repayment.

Conclusion

Fixing tech debt isn’t glamorous, but it’s what keeps velocity sustainable. For developers, focusing on foundation before features ensures you’re not stacking instability higher with every sprint. The best teams view debt not as failure but as an inevitable cost that has to be managed with discipline.

This article was adapted from my original blog post. Read the full version here: Tech Debt: Why Fixing the Foundation Comes Before Building the Castle

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