Technical debt in off-the-shelf software: the hidden obstacle to growth and innovation

Off-the-shelf software promises speed and convenience. You purchase a proven package and can get started almost immediately. Yet, technical debt often builds up unnoticed under the hood. Workarounds, custom integrations, and postponed updates pile up until, one day, every small change costs a disproportionate amount of time and money. In this article, you’ll learn what technical debt is in off-the-shelf software, how it arises, what it costs your organization, and how to identify, resolve, and prevent it.

Many organizations deliberately choose off-the-shelf software, also known as commercial off-the-shelf software (COTS), to support their business processes. This can be a sensible choice: the software is immediately available, has been proven in practice, and you don’t have to write code from scratch. But in practice, it quickly becomes apparent that virtually no off-the-shelf software package fully aligns with your organization’s workflows.

The discrepancy between what the package offers and what you need is often resolved through technical modifications and workarounds. Each modification makes sense on its own. Together, they form a debt that slowly accumulates and undermines your organization’s agility. For IT decision-makers, this is not a technical detail, but a strategic issue that directly impacts costs, speed, and innovative capacity.

What is technical debt in off-the-shelf software?

Technical debt arises when, while building or configuring software, you opt for a quick fix instead of a thorough approach. In the short term, this speeds up development, but you accumulate a debt that you’ll pay off later in the form of additional maintenance costs. Just like with financial debt, the interest keeps piling up: the longer you wait, the more time you’ll spend debugging, and the higher the bill will be.

For organizations, the real challenge often lies not in the software package itself, but primarily in the configurations, integrations, extensions, and processes that have developed around it. Think of custom integrations with other systems, third-party plugins, customized configurations, and scripts that add missing functionality. As long as you maintain an overview, this is manageable. But as the layers pile up over the years, the whole system becomes increasingly complex and fragile.

How does technical debt arise in off-the-shelf software?

In off-the-shelf software, technical debt often creeps up gradually and unnoticed, without anyone making a wrong decision. The main causes are:

1. Customizations on top of the standard solution. To add functionality missing from the standard package, you write extra code or build integrations outside the core system. This is convenient in the short term but difficult to maintain in the long term.
2. Delayed upgrades. Updates from the vendor are postponed out of fear that the customizations will break. This causes you to fall further and further behind, and the eventual upgrade becomes a large and risky project, particularly in terms of cybersecurity.
3. Proliferation of plugins and integrations. Additional features are added that, over time, are no longer maintained by anyone.
4. Forgotten configurations. Settings that have been adjusted over the years but are not documented anywhere.
5. Shadow IT. Employees come up with their own creative solutions—such as manually edited Excel exports—because the standard workflow doesn’t allow for them.
6. Back to basics. Remove unnecessary and outdated customizations and use the software’s (new) standard functionality wherever possible.
7. Make upgrades a routine. Treat updates as a fixed, ongoing task rather than a major project that you keep putting off.
8. Set aside time on a regular basis. In every sprint, schedule time for maintenance and improvement so that technical debt doesn’t build up again.
9. Manage the system properly. Define who is authorized to make changes to the system and document every change. This prevents new technical debt from accumulating unnoticed.

What are the consequences of technical debt in off-the-shelf software?

The consequences of technical debt in off-the-shelf software remain hidden for a long time, but over time they become painfully apparent. Your development and operations teams work more slowly because every change takes more time, and more and more hours are spent on maintenance and fixing bugs instead of on valuable improvements.

Moreover, that maintenance becomes more expensive, driving up total IT costs. At the same time, the software’s performance declines: applications can become slower and less stable, while the code and the environment become increasingly difficult to maintain and the risk of errors increases.

The result is a decline in innovation capacity. New initiatives fail because the IT landscape is too fragile to touch. For an IT decision-maker, this is the crux of the matter: technical debt slows down your organization and makes it more expensive—precisely at a time when the market demands speed and innovation.

Identifying technical debt

You can’t tackle technical debt until you know where it is. So start with an audit of your off-the-shelf software and everything you’ve built around it. Identify which custom integrations, plugins, versions, and configurations exist and where the greatest risks lie.

Code reviews are an effective tool for custom code and integrations. Experienced developers critically assess the code, identify weaknesses, and pinpoint which components cause the most problems. Combine this manual review with automated analysis tools so you don’t overlook anything and gain a complete picture of the situation.

AI canalso help here. AI-driven tools analyze large codebases, recognize patterns and dependencies faster than is possible manually, and reveal where technical debt is concentrated. But AI primarily provides signals. Interpretation remains a human task, and that’s just as important. Experienced developers determine which findings truly matter, take your organization’s context into account, and translate the analysis into the right decisions. AI is a valuable tool, but the knowledge and experience of IT specialists remain paramount.

Making technical debt a topic of discussion

Making it visible is one thing; acting on it is the next step. Once the audit and code reviews have brought everything to light, make technical debt a regular topic of discussion in retrospectives, refinements, architecture meetings, or risk discussions.

Record specific improvements in the backlog and prioritize them collaboratively based on business value and risk. This ensures that the debt doesn’t remain stuck in the minds of just a few developers but becomes a shared concern.

The product owner plays a key role here and adds the technical debt to the Product Backlog, so it is factored into prioritization alongside new functionality. This is the only way to prevent the repayment of the debt from being endlessly postponed in favor of visible features.

Resolving and preventing technical debt

Addressing technical debt is not a one-time project but an ongoing process. A few principles can help you get started:

When resolving technical debt, you can also AI can support you, for example, by accelerating refactoring, generating missing documentation, and suggesting tests. This lowers the barrier to actually tackling overdue maintenance. Here, too, AI supports the process, while the developer monitors quality and makes the final decisions.

Prevention is ultimately cheaper than cure. By making conscious choices from the start, documenting them, and regularly reviewing them, you maintain control over your IT landscape.

Where off-the-shelf software falls short, custom solutions offer flexibility

Technical debt in off-the-shelf software often stems from the gap between what the software package offers and what your organization actually needs. The wider that gap, the more workarounds you’ll need, and the faster technical debt accumulates.

Off-the-shelf software isn’t necessarily the wrong choice. For generic, support processes, such a COTS package often works just fine. But for the processes that set your organization apart, it pays to consider the benefits of custom software. This allows you to build exactly what you need, make informed architectural choices, and actively manage technical debt rather than constantly working around it.

Want to get a handle on your technical debt?

Want to know how much technical debt is hidden in your off-the-shelf software and how to address it? Contact us for a no-obligation consultation. We’ll help you identify, resolve, and prevent technical debt in the future. Is off-the-shelf software causing ongoing issues? Then we’d be happy to work with you to explore custom software that is fully tailored to your wishes and needs. This way, you’ll lay the foundation for an IT landscape that accelerates your organization rather than holding it back.