Technical debt is a problem that initially starts small and is often unnoticeable at first, but can easily spiral out of control if left unchecked. Over time, shortcuts, outdated systems, and poor development practices can lead to inefficiencies, frustrated employees, and rising costs.
How can you tell that your business is struggling with technical debt? Here are the key warning signs to look out for:
Employee Frustration
If your team is constantly frustrated due to having to battle with inefficient systems, slow development processes, or outdated tools, technical debt may well be the culprit. Your employees shouldn’t have to spend excessive time on manual workarounds, troubleshooting, or fixing the same recurring issues.
Persistent frustration can lead to disengagement, low job satisfaction, and even burnout. If employees are consistently raising concerns about the maintainability of your systems, it’s usually a fairly clear indicator that technical debt is creating roadblocks.
High Employee Turnover
This one ties into the employee frustration mentioned above! When facing technical debt, onboarding new team members can become a huge challenge. A lack of documentation, disorganised code, and unintuitive systems that require niche knowledge make it difficult for new hires to get up to speed, leading to longer training times and a frustrating experience for everyone.
If your new starters struggle to understand how things work and can’t make meaningful contributions early on, they may go elsewhere, creating a cycle of high turnover. If you’re experiencing this in your business, technical debt could well be playing a major role.
Slower Development Speed
Technical debt doesn’t just slow down your onboarding. Long deployment cycles, excessive manual processes (such as data entry, fixing issues, and testing), and inefficient workflows make it harder for teams to deliver new features or improvements in a timely manner.
When developers are hesitant to make changes because they know one change will likely cause unexpected issues elsewhere, it’s a red flag. Overly complex, duplicated, or obfuscated code makes development slower and riskier, leading to a cycle of delays and frustration.
More Frequent Bugs
As seen above, unmaintainable, messy code leads to instability. If your team is spending an increasing amount of time fixing bugs, addressing system failures, or patching issues that shouldn’t exist in the first place, technical debt is a probable cause.
While some bugs are inevitable, a growing number of critical issues, especially those that weren’t present previously, indicate that your codebase is fragile and difficult to work with. The more technical debt you have, the harder it becomes to build reliable, stable, and secure software.
Difficulty Integrating New Systems
If your existing architecture is outdated, poorly designed, or heavily reliant on legacy systems, integrating new solutions becomes an uphill battle.
Struggling to connect new systems and/or needing excessive custom development to make integrations work is a sign that your infrastructure isn’t built for scalability and as time goes on, future integrations will become more expensive and more time-consuming. This is a key sign that your systems may be struggling with technical debt, and it’s best to tackle the issue sooner rather than later.
Poor Performance
Not all performance issues are caused by technical debt, but when combined with other factors, they can absolutely be a strong indicator of it. If your systems are sluggish, unreliable, or prone to frequent crashes, outdated or inefficient code may be at the root of the problem.
This issue becomes even more critical when performance problems directly impact your customers. Slow load times, broken functionality, and unstable applications can drive users away, leading to lost revenue and reputational damage.
Spiralling Costs
If you’re spending more and more on technical support, troubleshooting, and patching up recurring issues, technical debt is likely a major factor. The longer you wait to address the problem, the more expensive it becomes.
Teams end up dedicating excessive resources to maintaining outdated systems instead of innovating or improving processes. Over time, these hidden costs add up, making it harder to allocate your budget towards meaningful growth and improvements.
Final Thoughts
Technical debt doesn’t just slow down development, but also impacts employee satisfaction, system stability, and business costs. If you’re noticing these warning signs, it’s time to take action.
Vertex Agility can help you tackle your technical debt head-on, ensuring your systems are scalable, maintainable, and future-proofed. 📧 Get in touch 📧 to find out how we can help you clean up your codebase and improve your development efficiency.