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Tech debt is slowing you down – find out how to stop it
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Tech debt is slowing you down – find out how to stop it
Jason Spriggs
Published on 28 July 2026
8 min read
Jason Spriggs
Published on 28 July 2026
8 min read
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What does tech debt look like in modern CI/CD pipelines?
When does tech debt become a delivery bottleneck?
How does tech debt impact your business?
How to reduce tech debt without slowing CI/CD
How to choose the right tools to simplify CI/CD
All the speed, none of the tradeoffs
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Tired of complex deployments? Discover actionable strategies to eliminate technical debt, streamline your CI/CD pipelines, and ship code faster with confidence.
Most development teams are like the rope in tug of war, being pulled in two different directions. On one side, there is fast shipment – the need to get fixes and features out at speed. On the other hand, there is the need to fix technical debt – delivering, updating, or replacing suboptimal code, architecture, and documentation to speed up early development.
But it’s a false trade-off between speed and stability. It’s poorly managed tech debt that actually slows CI/CD pipelines down and prevents fast shipment in the first place. What you want to do is increase speed and stability simultaneously. And we’re going to explain how.
In this blog post, we cover:
- What technical debt looks like in modern CI/CD pipelines
- When it becomes a delivery bottleneck
- The business impact of tech debt
- How to reduce tech debt without slowing CI/CD
- Choosing tools and platforms that simplify CI/CD
What does tech debt look like in modern CI/CD pipelines?
Technical debt is the implied future cost to your business of having to rework software that’s been created using a faster but usually suboptimal solution. We’re not just talking about bad code – it’s also inefficient workflows, fragile pipelines, and manual processes and workarounds that cause tech debt.
And it shows up in CI/CD pipelines. You can spot it when you have slow builds and tests, complex deployment scripts, tool sprawl across the whole life cycle, excessive handoffs between teams, and a lack of standardisation across different environments.
When does tech debt become a delivery bottleneck?
There’s a tipping point where tech debt becomes critical. And this is when it starts to impact the flow and predictability of your software delivery lifecycle. The key things to look out for are:
- Increasing build and deployment times – if the overall time it takes to move an idea from development to production is long, then tech debt is likely an issue. Likewise, if basic features take ages to implement or if they’re usually accompanied by unforeseen technical hurdles.
- Frequent pipeline failures or rollbacks – this also includes high bug rates, where a system is unstable and fixing one issue has a knock-on effect in unrelated areas.
- A growing backlog of “we’ll fix that later” work – this is a big bottleneck issue, especially when you’re dealing with a high operational load where non-automated processes are the norm. These fixes will never get done.
- A rising dependency on tribal knowledge – this can have a big impact, particularly on new developers. Your system shouldn’t be difficult to understand or require specialised knowledge for your teams to use it.
How does tech debt impact your business?
The technical symptoms are hard to ignore (although many organisations choose to), but what about the wider business impact? When tech debt is rife in your CI/CD environments, there are some big business-level consequences.
Time-to-market slows down
With pipeline inefficiencies, constant rework, and system instability to contend with, delays don’t let up. Getting fixes and updates to market takes forever, impacting your ability to release new features quickly and respond to demands.
Operational costs shoot up
Your engineers are forced to focus on fixing broken pipelines and maintaining legacy workflows. All this wasted time stifles innovation and increases the cost per deployment.
Risk increases and compliance is inconsistent
If fragile pipelines become the norm, you’ll see a sharp increase in deployment failures, as well as big security gaps that leave you wide open to cyberattacks. And manual processes contribute too, making it hard to maintain consistent compliance practices.
Developers are less productive
Your developers might be working hard, but they’re not being productive. They have to spend all their time troubleshooting pipelines and finding their way around complex workflows. There’s less time to spend on higher-value work that gets you closer to your goals.
How to reduce tech debt without slowing CI/CD
With tech debt identified, it’s time to do something about it. You might think a big clean-up project is the way to go. But these can cause more problems than they solve. First, they slow delivery down in the short-turn, and when the pressure ramps up they’re deprioritised. While debt might diminish initially, it continues to accumulate, and before you know it, you’re back to square one.
What you need is a continuous system-level approach that reduces tech debt without slowing things down. Here are four steps that make a difference:
1. Build debt reduction into your workflow
It’s time to shift left and address tech debt issues earlier in your software delivery life cycle. To do this, you’ll need to embed automated testing, implement comprehensive security checks, and set up code quality gates. This makes “doing the right thing” the default, rather than something that’s easy to sacrifice over speed.
2. Standardise your pipelines
The trick here is to reduce variability and increase simplicity by providing reusable templates and shared pipeline components. Put the work in now and you’ll benefit from less maintenance, fewer errors, and faster onboarding for your new hires.
3. Reduce handoffs and manual processes
If you know a lot of bottlenecks are being caused by length approval processes and cross-team dependencies, it’s time to tackle them. Move towards self-service workflows and automation-centric processes that minimise handoffs.
4. Tackle the worst debt first
Assess all your tech debt and prioritise where you’re going to focus your efforts, looking at the impact the debt has on delivery speed and the frequency of issues arising from it. Areas to concentrate on include pipeline bottlenecks, flaky tests, and deployment failures.
How to choose the right tools to simplify CI/CD
With a strategy in place, you need tools to tackle it. And that’s where choosing the right tools to reduce complexity is so important. You want to minimise context switching and improve workflow efficiency. So make sure you avoid too much tool sprawl across the CI/CD pipeline. You want tools that can integrate across the toolchain and are easy to use and maintain.
This is where integrated platforms and DevSecOps ecosystems can play a big role. They’re unified platforms that connect your software delivery life cycle, rather than relying on multiple standalone tools. This approach improves visibility and reduces friction. Plus, developer platforms usually have built-in security and compliance.
Once you know what works, developer platforms are a great way to standardise and scale best practices. They also support the self-service capabilities recommended above and include pre-approved workflows to support speedy delivery. They’re all about moving fast while minimising risk.
All the speed, none of the tradeoffs
To recap, speed and safety shouldn’t be at odds with one another. By getting a handle on your tech debt, you can improve the speed of your pipelines and ensure reliable releases every time. By prioritising tech debt reduction and embracing a platform approach, you can embed security and quality earlier in your software development life cycle, speed up your time to market, lower operational costs, and have delivery you can depend on.
You can’t eradicate tech debt. But with the right approach and tools, you can manage it effectively, controlling and reducing it over time.
Ready to tackle your tech debt?
Every team's tech debt looks different, and so does the fix. Our engineers can help you assess your CI/CD pipelines, spot where inefficiencies are creeping in, and build a plan to reduce debt without slowing down delivery.
Written by
Global DevOps Practice Lead
Jason, our award-winning Global DevOps Practice Lead, provides architectural vision and technical expertise to design comprehensive solutions for our clients. His team drives direction for our solutions, encompassing a wide range of industry-leading technologies and processes.