Beyond the Commit, Episode 3: Sebastian Titze

In this episode, we explain the essential challenge faced by every modern software organization: technical debt. We analyze how to define it, distinguish between conscious strategic debt and unintentional "mess", and, crucially, how to manage and eliminate it to maintain development speed and team morale. Our host, Paweł Dolega, discusses this topic with Sebastian Titze, CTO at Corify, an experienced technology leader. Sebastian, drawing on his career experience from working in the financial sector to consulting and management, shares his strategies. He explains how to measure technical debt using metrics like cognitive complexity and change frequency, emphasizes that fixing tech debt must be framed as a business decision (ROI), and stresses the importance of organizational culture and team motivation in addressing it. Chapters: 00:00 - 01:04 - Intro 01:05 - 07:02 - Sebastian’s introduction 07:03 - 14:22 - Defining technical debt 14:23 - 21:19 - Measuring technical debt 21:20 - 27:00 - A danger of over-engineering 27:00 - 50:12 - Fixing technical debt 50:13 - 52:01 - Can AI help in fixing the technical debt? 52:02 - 01:01:54 - Wrap up