Technical debt is a necessary evil. You can’t always apply best practices in development, because the priority isn’t always writing the best code, but meeting deadlines and delivering a functional product.
That’s when we step in and bring order to the chaos, creating an action plan that maximizes ROI and eliminates obstacles that could compromise the future of your business. This guide is the result of our efforts—let’s review it step by step.
Audit the Infrastructure to Quantify the Debt
At first, it’s just a perception. You notice that certain processes run slower than usual or fail when they shouldn’t, but you dismiss it thinking these are “things that happen.” Cracks begin to appear.
The moment arrives when the margin for action shrinks and your performance starts to drop. You can’t meet goals because you no longer have the capacity to do so. That’s when alarm bells ring.
Addressing technical debt starts by quantifying the technical deficit and turning it into a measurable metric. The audit reveals the bottlenecks that block the greatest amount of value, leading to a figure that measures the weight of the debt and how much you will accelerate with a deep remediation.
At Crazy Imagine Software, we conduct the audit to produce actionable numbers and outline an action plan—not to place blame. As we thoroughly assess your architecture, we also think of possible solutions and tools to resolve emerging problems. Our audit includes:
- Dependency mapping.
- Translation of operational risk into remediation cost.
- Bug density analysis.
- Test coverage.
- Refactoring time.
Establish a Framework for Strategic Prioritization
Previously, a client made the mistake of attacking all bottlenecks at once. Besides diluting the effort and failing to settle the debt entirely, they also slowed down deliveries by 25%.
The lesson is clear: strategic prioritization is essential to settle your technical debt. It’s not about solving everything in a single day or fixing what’s most annoying, but addressing what unlocks the most value.
Concentrating efforts and assigning an order of priority organizes the solution to increase its effectiveness. Instead of jumping in without a strategy, an action plan guides execution to resolve the problem one module or process at a time.
As we tackle and resolve projects, we’ve built a matrix that helps structure the work and allows Product Owners, CTOs, and the board to speak the same language:
| Priority | Business Impact | Execution Urgency | Debt Strategy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Critical | Directly affects customer retention or security. | Immediate | Accelerated Execution |
| Strategic | Blocks the development of key new features (Roadmap). | Short Term | Debt Budget Assignment |
| Operational | Affects only the internal speed of the team. | Medium Term | Knowledge Transfer/Mentorship |
Accelerate Execution with Technical Injection
A deep remediation of this kind demands full attention—something difficult if your internal team must continue delivering work. Splitting focus between two major fronts compromises both the solution and ongoing development.
This is where external technical injection becomes crucial. When we integrate talent specialized in refactoring complex architectures and legacy technologies, we accelerate the reduction of technical debt in just a few days, clearing the way for new features to take off fully.
Imagine this: you have three expert engineers in refactoring, fully dedicated to stabilizing the backend. Your internal talent stays focused and continues building new features to stay aligned with the roadmap. It’s the ideal scenario—the best one for your goals.
That’s how we work. We eliminate the most expensive bottlenecks in a short time to maximize ROI. This way, your internal team immediately experiences increased speed and stability in your operations.
Transfer Knowledge to Elevate Technical Capacity
The work doesn’t end once all errors are resolved. To keep your platform stable and fast, it’s critical that your team levels up with new knowledge and strategies that help maintain and consolidate the quality improvements over time.
After reducing technical debt, we conduct an active transfer process where you receive new testing methodologies, solid design principles, and better architectural practices. The goal is to upskill your talent and sustain code quality in the long term.
This process also includes personalized training for the most critical deficiencies identified in the audit. Missing unit tests? We implement a TDD (Test-Driven Development) bootcamp. Architectural issues? We focus on scalable design patterns.
While you enjoy the benefits of clean, functional code, your internal team becomes empowered and trained to maintain this quality level in the future. It’s a double victory.
Build a Culture of Prevention and Quality Governance
Regardless of the industry, all leading companies integrate quality as a fundamental part of their lifecycle rather than treating it as a one-time event. In other words, they understand quality as a continuous process, not a destination.
This is possible by implementing mechanisms that prevent debt from accumulating again. One of them is integrating metrics directly into the CI/CD pipeline. If code is too complex or lacks proper tests, it simply cannot be deployed to production.
It’s also necessary to incorporate a debt budget and make it part of your roadmap, with its own owner and delivery date. Implementing the 20% rule or something similar as a recurring action ensures that you always work proactively to keep debt at bay.
The Before and After of Willapp
Willapp is a Spanish startup dedicated to digital invoicing and reservation management for beauty centers. The platform exceeded its user growth projections overnight, and cracks quickly began to appear. They were victims of their own success.
When they explained their situation, the solution became clear immediately. They didn’t need more development—they needed to resolve past errors and clear the path for what was coming next.
We had one mission: dive into their system and restructure it from the inside. After completing the audit and mapping the bottlenecks, we set out to transform the technical foundation to sustain the present while preparing for future growth.
Our stack included tools like Angular, React, PHP, and a robust AWS infrastructure. We identified bottlenecks and redesigned critical parts of the architecture to stabilize current operations and create space for what’s ahead.
We documented the solution, transferred the learnings, and did something more: provided technical support and customer management with additional talent. Finally, we implemented automated Virtual Assistance solutions to improve user satisfaction and retention.
Supporting Willapp meant unlocking the potential of their technical foundation and expanding it toward their future business goals, while also strengthening the present with modern solutions that enhance user experience. Their increased ROI proves it.
