What We Look For During Technical Debt Audits
A rigorous assessment template leaders can apply before committing to large remediation programs.
Back to all postsAny recommendation to spend six or seven figures on modernization must be grounded in evidence. Our audit framework inspects code health, delivery operations, observability, and product risk. Each dimension returns a color-coded score with a short explanation that executives can repeat.
We start with repository analytics: contribution hotspots, file churn, flaky tests, and deployment history. Those signals reveal unstable areas before a single engineer reviews the code.
Next comes dependency and architecture mapping. AI-assisted projects often hide duplicated services or unbounded data access. We chart blast radius and create impact heatmaps that product and engineering can review together.
Finally, we quantify risk with hard numbers—incident frequency, regulatory obligations, customer escalations—and pair each remediation idea with a measurable definition of done.
Key takeaways
- Anchor every modernization recommendation in metrics executives recognise.
- Document the blast radius of fragile dependencies to guide sequencing.
- Translate technical findings into roadmap-ready remediation items.
Implementation checklist
- Collect repo analytics: churn, hotspots, flaky tests, deployment frequency.
- Map external dependencies and data contracts with owners and SLAs.
- Define success criteria and business impact for the top remediation items.