Ruthless Tech Debt Remediation

How to Face a Mountain of Tech Debt and Absolutely Kick It’s A**

Welcome Leaders!

Who among us has not enjoyed a big, steaming pile of technical debt?

We first encounter it as wet-behind-the-ears engineers. In those early stages of our careers, we shake our heads at how incompetent the original designers of the system must have been.

But our understanding evolves as we rise through the ranks. We start to realize that technical debt is often unavoidable. It’s digital entropy.

But what happens as a CTO when you encounter mountains of technical debt accumulated over years that seems overwhelming & is nearly crushing the company.

Well, you get ruthless. And that’s what we’ll talk about today.

Cheers,

Bobby

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So you’re leading the technology side of your company and you’re facing a mountain of scary-looking technical debt. ⛰️

In fact, it’s so big that’s it’s overwhelming sometimes. And, you’re sure that it’s seriously harming the company in several important ways.

But the worst part is that other than you and a handful of engineers, not a whole lot of people in the organization really care about this very worrisome problem.

In fact, I’m sure you’ve tried many times to get people to pay attention to it but it hasn’t worked — stakeholders may listen but nothing actually changes. There’s no new budget allocations, no special time carved out just for you to tackle this problem…just nothing.

And in the meantime, as the leader you know the tech ecosystem is accelerating like a bullet train into a wall. 🚄

So, what the heck are you supposed to do?

Well, I’m about to give you the “ruthless” tech debt remediation playbook (for use in emergency situations only).

I’ve used this before and it works.

But you have to have the guts to do it — it’s definitely not for the shy CTO or VPE. In fact, this is one of those “put your reputation on the line” kind of approaches.

But you might be in a situation where the impact from carrying a lot of tech debt is messing with your reputation anyway.

So, while this playbook is scary (just warning you) it does work, and maybe it can help you out.

Let’s dive into the playbook and what to do.