Every software engineer is familiar with the term “technical debt”, but few businesses fully grasp its long-term implications. Like financial debt, technical debt accumulates interest over time—except instead of dollars, the cost is measured in slower development cycles, higher maintenance costs, and mounting frustration for engineering teams.
Technical debt doesn’t appear overnight. It often starts innocently—a rushed feature release to meet a deadline, a temporary workaround that becomes permanent, or a dependency that never gets updated. Over time, these shortcuts compound, turning what was once a manageable system into a brittle, unmaintainable mess.
One of our clients, a mid-sized fintech firm, was running a 10-year-old Java monolith with no continuous integration pipeline. Every new feature took twice as long to develop because engineers were terrified of breaking existing functionality. The system had become so fragile that even minor updates required extensive manual testing.
The consequences of unaddressed technical debt extend far beyond engineering frustrations. Slower innovation is often the first symptom—what used to take days now takes weeks. Employee morale suffers, as talented engineers grow tired of maintaining spaghetti code. And perhaps most dangerously, outdated dependencies can introduce critical security vulnerabilities, putting the entire business at risk.
At Bruhm, we’ve learned that “big bang” rewrites are rarely the answer. They’re expensive, risky, and often fail to deliver the promised benefits. Instead, we advocate for incremental modernization
First, we conduct a thorough audit to identify the most pressing pain points. Next, we prioritize high-impact refactoring, focusing on the components that deliver the most value when improved. For the fintech client, this meant gradually extracting key functionalities into standalone microservices while introducing automated testing to prevent new debt from accumulating.
Within a year, their release cycles shrank from months to weeks, and developer satisfaction improved dramatically.
The most forward-thinking leaders treat technical debt like financial debt—you can’t ignore it forever. The longer you wait, the more expensive it becomes to address. Proactive investment in modernization isn’t a cost; it’s a strategic necessity for staying competitive.
For businesses looking to tackle technical debt, we recommend starting with an honest assessment of your current systems. Identify the areas causing the most pain, and create a phased plan for improvement. Most importantly, establish guardrails—like code reviews and automated testing—to prevent new debt from piling up.
Technical debt isn’t just an engineering problem—it’s a business risk. Companies that proactively manage it outperform their competitors and retain top talent. At Bruhm Services, we specialize in helping businesses escape the technical debt spiral and build software systems that stand the test of time.
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