Is Technical Debt Killing Your Velocity?
Studies show technical debt costs companies 23-42% of development time. Calculate your hidden costs and build a business case for modernisation.
Technical Debt Assessment
Approximate total lines of code
Code older than 3 years or outdated
Percentage of code with automated tests
Percentage of code documented
Signs of Critical Technical Debt
- ⚠️ Features take 3x longer than estimated
- ⚠️ Deployments require manual intervention
- ⚠️ Developers avoid certain parts of code
- ⚠️ Simple changes break other features
- ⚠️ No one understands the full system
- ⚠️ Testing takes longer than development
- ⚠️ Cannot upgrade dependencies
- ⚠️ Performance degrades over time
- ⚠️ Security patches are risky
- ⚠️ New developers take months to onboard
Industry Benchmarks
| Metric | Poor | Average | Good | Elite |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Test Coverage | Less than 20% | 20-50% | 50-80% | Greater than 80% |
| Deployment Frequency | Monthly | Weekly | Daily | On demand |
| Lead Time | Greater than 1 month | 1 week - 1 month | 1 day - 1 week | Less than 1 day |
| MTTR | Greater than 1 week | 1 day - 1 week | Less than 1 day | Less than 1 hour |
| Change Failure Rate | Greater than 45% | 16-45% | 0-15% | Less than 5% |