The true cost of technical debt: Why SMEs lose £50k+ annually
Comprehensive guide covering the 4-layer cost model, real case studies, and escape strategies.
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What this tool does
This assessment evaluates your organisation's approach to managing technical debt across 6 key dimensions: code quality, architecture, infrastructure, process, security, and team knowledge. You'll receive a maturity level score with specific priorities for improvement.
Answer honestly for the most useful results. This takes approximately 3-5 minutes.
How this assessment works
This assessment uses a research-backed framework aligned with industry best practices from CMMI, Google's technical debt research, and McKinsey's remediation frameworks.
12 questions
2 questions per dimension, covering practical scenarios you'll recognise
6 dimensions
Code Quality, Architecture, Infrastructure, Process, Security, Team Knowledge
UK benchmarks
Compare your results against UK Government 2025 research data
Technical debt maturity assessment
Discover your technical debt maturity level
Answer 12 quick questions to assess your organisation's technical debt maturity across 6 dimensions: code quality, architecture, infrastructure, process, security, and team knowledge.
Takes approximately 3-5 minutes
The 5 maturity levels
| Level | Characteristics | Annual Cost (5-person team) |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Reactive | Daily firefighting, no tracking | >£100k |
| 2. Aware | Problems recognized, ad-hoc fixes | £50k-£100k |
| 3. Managed | Systematic tracking, regular allocation | £25k-£50k |
| 4. Proactive | Prevention focus, continuous refactoring | £10k-£25k |
| 5. Optimized | Strategic lever, predictive analytics | <£10k |
When to use this tool
- Baseline assessment - Understand your current state before starting improvement initiatives
- Team alignment - Get everyone on the same page about technical debt challenges
- Progress tracking - Re-assess quarterly to measure improvement
- Budget justification - Use results to support technology investment requests
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Frequently asked questions
Technical debt is the accumulation of shortcuts, outdated systems, and deferred maintenance in your technology.
Like financial debt, it accrues "interest" - the longer you leave it, the more it costs to fix.
This includes outdated code, systems on unsupported software versions, missing documentation,
inadequate testing, and poor architectural decisions. Research shows technical debt typically
consumes 23-42% of development time across organisations.
Technical debt directly impacts your bottom line. Companies with high technical debt are 50% slower
at releasing new features (Gartner), and organisations pay 10-20% more per project due to technical
debt (McKinsey). For a 5-person development team, technical debt can cost over £100,000 annually in
lost productivity. It also increases security risk - over 60% of cyberattacks exploit vulnerabilities
in unsupported software.
The assessment evaluates your organisation across 6 key dimensions: Code Quality, Architecture,
Infrastructure, Process, Security, and Team & Documentation. Each dimension is scored 0-100 based
on your answers to 2 questions per area. Your overall maturity level (Reactive through Optimised)
is determined by your average score across all dimensions.
Use the 80/20 principle: 80% of problems typically come from 20% of issues. Prioritise "quick wins"
(high impact, low effort) first, then plan strategic investments (high impact, high effort) carefully.
Focus on security debt for regulatory compliance, architecture debt for scalability, and code quality
for developer productivity.
Quick wins can be achieved in 3-6 months (fixing builds, removing dead code, improving documentation).
Moderate improvements take 6-18 months (code refactoring, test coverage expansion). Major architectural
transformation typically requires 2-5 years. Moving up one maturity level typically takes 12-24 months
of consistent effort.
Industry best practice recommends allocating 15-25% of development capacity to technical debt
remediation. For a 10-developer team, this means 1.5 to 2.5 developers dedicated to debt work,
representing approximately £75,000-£125,000 annually in development time. This prevents debt from
accumulating faster than it's being paid down.
No - focus on the worst 20% that causes 80% of problems. Accept some technical debt as permanent
(low-impact legacy systems), prioritise debt blocking strategic initiatives, and always address
security-related debt. Use the "Boy Scout Rule" - leave code slightly better than you found it
during regular development work.
