It is not feasible to pay back all your technical debt. If you don't keep your debt under control, the "interest payments" will prevent you from delivering new features and can lead to significant business impact. Use this methodology to measure the business impact of your technical debt and build a roadmap to fix it:
- Define and identify your technical debt.
- Measure the business impact of your technical debt.
- Present options to "pay back" technical debt, and take steps to manage the amount of new debt you take on.
Technical debt is a type of technical risk, which in turn is business risk. IT should be a trusted advisor to business leaders making risk management decisions, and must present the level of risk and options to manage that risk. It’s up to the business to decide whether to accept technical debt, or mitigate it.