The CIO's Playbook For Reducing Tech Debt
Search CIO, Thursday, October 2nd, 2025
Technical debt drains budgets and limits growth. CIOs must address outdated systems through audits, governance and modernization to remain competitive.
Executive Summary
- Technical debt is more than an IT problem -- it is a board-level risk.
- If technical debt is not managed, it drives up costs, increases security vulnerabilities, slows innovation, and affects scalability and customer satisfaction.
- IT leaders must adopt a playbook to reduce technical debt. This includes conducting audits, quantifying debt, aligning reduction with business outcomes, embedding governance and using modern tools -- such as AI -- to phase out legacy systems.
While debt was once referred to simply as "money owed," the increasing rate of technology adoption has created a new kind of debt that plagues companies and IT leaders. Technical debt -- also known as tech debt -- refers to the costs associated with relying on suboptimal shortcuts in technology and using outdated technology to maintain business operations. The longer this debt remains unaddressed, the more expensive it becomes to resolve, so it accumulates interest -- similar to other financial debts.