How to Make the Business Case for Paying Down Technical Debt

I've pitched technical debt remediation to leadership at four different companies. The first two times, I failed completely. I walked in with phrases like "code maintainability" and "architectural integrity." I walked out with nothing.

The third and fourth times, I got full executive sponsorship. The difference wasn't the severity of the debt. It was how I framed the argument.

Here's my playbook for getting leadership to fund tech debt work. Steal it.

# Why Most Pitches Fail

Engineers pitch debt remediation the way engineers think about it: from a technical perspective. We talk about coupling, cohesion, patterns, and anti-patterns. We say things like "we need to refactor the service layer."

Leadership hears: "Engineers want to rewrite working code for reasons I don't understand, and nothing visible will change."

That's not unfair. From their seat, it's exactly what it sounds like. The code works. Customers aren't complaining (about the architecture, anyway). The feature roadmap is full of things customers are asking for. Why would they fund invisible work?

You have to translate technical debt into the three things every business leader cares about: time, money, and risk.

# The Business Case Framework

I use a four-part structure. It takes about 30 minutes to prepare and 10 minutes to present.

# Part 1: The Current Cost (Show the Bleeding)

Don't lead with what you want to do. Lead with what the debt is costing right now.

CURRENT QUARTERLY COST OF DEBT IN PAYMENTS MODULE

Engineering time lost to workarounds:
  - 6 engineers x 5 hrs/week x 13 weeks = 390 hours
  - At $85/hr fully loaded = $33,150/quarter

Incident response:
  - 4 incidents/quarter x avg 8 hrs to resolve x 2 engineers
  - = 64 hours = $5,440/quarter

Delayed features:
  - 3 features shipped late due to payment module complexity
  - Estimated revenue delay: $45,000

Opportunity cost:
  - 2 features deprioritized because estimated effort was 3x
  - what it should be (built workarounds instead)

TOTAL ESTIMATED QUARTERLY COST: $83,590+

Those numbers don't need to be exact. They need to be defensible. Use real data from your sprint retrospectives, incident reports, and estimation comparisons.

# Part 2: The Trajectory (Show It Getting Worse)

Debt compounds. Show the trend.

If you can show that delivery time is increasing quarter over quarter, you've made the case that doing nothing is not a zero-cost option. Doing nothing has an increasing cost.

This is the key insight most engineers miss. The alternative to paying down debt is not "free." The alternative is paying an ever-growing tax on everything you build.

# Part 3: The Investment (Be Specific About Cost)

Now you can talk about what you want to do. Be concrete.

PROPOSED INVESTMENT

Phase 1 (3 sprints):
  - Extract payment processing into dedicated service
  - Add integration test suite (currently 0 tests)
  - Estimated effort: 2 engineers x 6 weeks
  - Cost: ~$40,800

Phase 2 (2 sprints):
  - Migrate from legacy payment gateway API to v3
  - Implement circuit breaker pattern
  - Estimated effort: 2 engineers x 4 weeks
  - Cost: ~$27,200

TOTAL INVESTMENT: ~$68,000

# Part 4: The Return (Show the Payoff)

This is where you close the deal.

PROJECTED RETURN (per quarter, starting Q2 after remediation)

Reduced engineering overhead: ~$20,000/quarter
  (from $33,150 to ~$13,000)

Reduced incident cost: ~$4,000/quarter
  (from $5,440 to ~$1,400)

Faster feature delivery: ~$30,000/quarter
  (2 additional features shipped on time)

QUARTERLY SAVINGS: ~$54,000
PAYBACK PERIOD: ~5 weeks after completion
ANNUAL ROI: 317%

A 317% annual ROI in 5 weeks. That's a pitch even the most feature-obsessed VP of Product will listen to.

# The Presentation: 10 Minutes, 5 Slides

Slide 1: The Problem "Our payments module is costing us $83K per quarter in engineering overhead, incidents, and delayed features."

Slide 2: The Trend Show the table. Delivery times going up, incidents going up.

Slide 3: Root Cause One paragraph. "The payments module was built for 100 transactions/day. We now process 12,000. The architecture wasn't designed for this scale, and incremental patches have made it fragile."

Slide 4: The Fix Two phases, specific timelines, specific costs. $68K total.

Slide 5: The Return $54K savings per quarter. 5-week payback. 317% annual ROI.

That's it. No mention of "clean code." No mention of "refactoring." Just business outcomes.

# Common Objections and How to Handle Them

"Can't we just fix it as we go?"

"We've been doing that for 4 quarters. The trend is getting worse, not better. Incremental fixes in this area are like patching a roof that needs replacing. Each patch makes the next one harder."

"Can we do it with less investment?"

"We can do Phase 1 only for $41K. That addresses the highest-impact issues and gives us ~60% of the projected savings. We can evaluate Phase 2 after."

"What features will slip?"

Have this ready. Know exactly what feature work will be delayed and for how long. "Features X and Y will ship 3 weeks later than planned. Given that those features will themselves be built faster once the remediation is done, the net delay to the overall roadmap is approximately 1 week."

"How do I know this will actually fix the problem?"

"We'll track three metrics weekly during and after the project: change lead time, incident rate, and engineering hours lost to workarounds. I'll report progress in our regular leadership sync. If we're not seeing improvement after Phase 1, we'll reassess before starting Phase 2."

# The Contrarian Take

I used to believe that engineers shouldn't need to "sell" technical work. That good engineering should speak for itself. I was wrong, and that attitude cost my teams months of progress.

Technical debt remediation competes with feature work for the same resource: engineering time. If you can't articulate why debt work is a better investment than feature work in a given quarter, maybe it isn't. The discipline of building a business case doesn't just help you get funding. It helps you make sure you're working on the right debt.

Not all debt is worth paying down. Some debt is cheap to carry. The business case framework forces you to prove that the debt you want to address is genuinely costing more than the remediation.

# The Stealable Checklist

Before pitching debt remediation, make sure you have:

• Current quarterly cost in dollars (with supporting data)
• Trend over at least 3 quarters showing increasing cost
• Specific remediation plan with phases and timeline
• Dollar cost of the remediation
• Projected quarterly savings after remediation
• Payback period calculated
• Answers to the top 4 objections prepared
• Metrics you'll track to prove success
• List of feature work that will be delayed and net impact
• One-page executive summary (the 5 slides above)

If you can check every box, you'll get the funding. I've never seen this approach fail when the data is solid.