Technical Debt: Design, risk and beyond
We talk to experienced architects and technology leaders about the architectural choices they’ve made — the good, the bad, and the costly. From scaling systems to integrating legacy platforms, from misaligned domains to governance gaps, we discuss how architecture impacts technical debt.
You’ll hear honest stories of architectural missteps, what teams learned from them, and how they built systems designed not just to work, but to last.
Episodes
15 episodes
From decision debt to system fragility: a CEO’s view on technical debt with David Cruz
In this episode of Technical Debt: Design, Risk, and Beyond, we look at technical debt from a place it’s rarely discussed - the CEO’s desk.My guest is David Cruz, Founder & CEO of Elmaextro, certified business ...
Technical debt under real constraints: fintech leadership in emerging markets with Erioluwa Asiru
In this episode of Technical Debt: Design, Risk and Beyond, Maxim Silaev speaks with Erioluwa Asiru, CTO at CircleFunds, about what technical debt really looks like inside a fast-growing fintech ope...
How Technical Debt creeps in: leadership, AI, and long-term cost with Rob Broadhead
In this episode of Technical Debt: Design, Risk and Beyond, Maxim Silaev is joined by Rob Broadhead, a technology leader with more than 30 years of experience across enterprise systems, startups, and consulting.
How to assess technical debt: strategic, product, and architectural: TSB Bank case study
In this episode of Technical Debt: Design, Risk and Beyond, hosts Maxim Silaev and Nikita Golovko break down one of the most widely documented technical-debt disasters in modern enterprise IT: the failed 2018 TSB Bank mig...
Interserve case: when communication debt becomes a security breach
What happens when a company’s biggest vulnerability isn’t its software, but its communication?In this episode of Technical Debt: Design, Risk and Beyond, hosts Maxim Silaev and Nikita Golovko explore the collapse o...
Secure boot: debt, trust, and the future of firmware security
Secure Boot was designed to solve one of the most fundamental security problems in computing: how to ensure that only trusted software starts your machine. But like any architectural decision, it came with its own trade-offs, and its own techni...
Technical debt beyond technology with Simon Copsey
Technical debt is not just about code! it is the visible symptom of deeper organisational issues. When companies try to move faster than their systems, teams, or leadership structures allow, debt shows up in technology but originate...
Technical debt in frontend with Christian Joecker
Frontend moves fast — but with every new framework, testing shortcut, or design compromise, teams risk piling up technical debt that quickly becomes visible to users and costly to the business.In this episode of Technical Debt: Desig...
What do we mean by Architecture?
Everyone has their own definition of "architecture". For some, it is diagrams. For others, it is documentation, a set of rules, or technical excellence. Some see it as task-setting, others as an evolving discipline. But what does IT archite...
Can AI help identify hidden technical debt better than humans?
In this episode of Technical Debt: Design, Risk and Beyond, hosts Maxim Silaev and Nikita Golovko explore whether artificial intelligence can really spot technical debt more effectively than human architects and engineers...
What does it really mean to pay off technical debt?
We often talk about “paying off technical debt” as if it were a one-time event, but is that even possible? In this episode, Maxim Silaev and Nikita Golovko dive deep into what it truly means to address technical debt and why the language of "pa...
Legacy is not a four-letter word: rethinking old codebases
Legacy doesn’t have to mean “bad.” In this episode of Technical Debt: Design, Risk and Beyond, hosts Maxim Silaev and Nikita Golovko discuss and challenge the myths around legacy code. They explore when legacy systems are a liability, ...
The hidden cost of scaling teams and how architecture can help
As engineering teams grow, many organizations expect velocity to increase, but often the opposite happens. In this episode, we will explore the invisible costs of scaling headcount without evolving your system architecture. From onboarding dela...
How product strategy silently shapes your architecture, and what architects can do about it
In this episode, we explore how product strategy - even when not explicitly technical - has a profound and in most times invisible impact on software architecture. From market segmentation to feature prioritisation, many product decisions quiet...
Engineering Culture that Prevents Technical Debt
In this episode, we explore how technical debt is not just a code problem — it's a cultural one. Together, we unpack the elements of a healthy engineering culture that naturally guards against the slow decay of software systems.We start ...