7 Types Of Tech Debt That Could Cripple Your Business
CIO, Tuesday, March 25th, 2025
IT leaders need to look beyond legacy systems to see what's really holding their IT agendas back from delivering transformative results.
CIOs perennially deal with technical debt's risks, costs, and complexities. While the impacts of legacy systems can be quantified, technical debt is also often embedded in subtler ways across the IT ecosystem, making it hard to account for the full list of issues and risks.
Forrester reports that 30% of IT leaders struggle with high or critical debt, while 49% more face moderate levels. Even in the case of moderate to low risk, technical debt impacts can change quickly as business needs evolve. After all, a low-risk annoyance in a key application can become a sizable boulder when the app requires modernization to support a digital transformation initiative.