Managing Technical Debt: Approaches and Perspectives

Technical debt is a term many development teams know well. While often seen as a negative, it can also reflect your team’s ability to deliver quickly and innovate—prioritizing progress over perfection. In some cases, it’s a necessary trade-off for hitting critical deadlines or staying competitive in fast-moving markets.

However, when left unmanaged, technical debt can slow progress, degrade software performance, and introduce security risks. The challenge is striking a balance—leveraging technical debt to push your goals forward without it impacting the quality of your product or allowing it to stifle future innovation. 

In this article, we’ll explore the types and causes of technical debt, along with its impact on your team and product. Finally, we’ll discuss the best strategies for managing technical debt, and I’ll share our experience and approach to handling it here at Scalable Path. 

Quick Refresher: What is Technical Debt?

Technical debt refers to the accumulated issues, shortcuts, and inefficiencies in your codebase and architecture. It represents a trade-off—speed and innovation today at the cost of potential challenges tomorrow. It can be the result of prioritizing fast delivery over perfection.

Four Types of Tech Debt

Technical debt comes in many forms, and how you categorize it can depend on your team’s priorities, your product’s lifecycle, or even the specific challenges your organization faces. Some teams might break down technical debt by impact—whether it slows down performance, increases security risks, or complicates development. Others might categorize it by source—whether it stems from poor code quality, outdated technology, or manual processes.

In this article, we’re going to organize technical debt into four areas that are most affected by it: