6 Tips to Reduce and Manage Technical Debt in 2026

Four years ago, Southwest Airlines faced a significant operational crisis following a winter storm, not due to the weather itself, but because of a deeply flawed crew scheduling system burdened by technical debt. Technical debt, a term coined by Ward Cunningham, refers to the future costs incurred by opting for easier solutions in the present and can compound over time if not managed properly, as seen in industries like banking, insurance, and healthcare. The article emphasizes that technical debt is not inherently negative and can be strategically leveraged for faster development, but visibility and management are crucial to prevent it from becoming a liability, leading to outages, security issues, and inefficiencies. It discusses factors contributing to technical debt, such as short-term trade-offs, poor practices, ageing infrastructure, and lack of ownership, and suggests solutions like making debt visible, prioritizing it with real metrics, incorporating debt repayment in sprint planning, using feature flags, automating clean-ups, and aligning governance with team workflows. The Southwest incident serves as a cautionary tale about the importance of managing technical debt proactively to prevent catastrophic failures, encouraging organizations to adopt a culture that prioritizes transparency and accountability in handling technical debt.

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