The Silent Killer of Growth: Refactor or Rebuild

It usually starts with a complaint.

Maybe your Sales VP wants to know why a simple feature takes three weeks. Or your lead developer grumbles—again—that the codebase has turned into spaghetti. You can ignore it for a while, but eventually, it catches up with you. You’re burning more money on engineering, but shipping less.

This is technical debt. It’s not just something developers say to make excuses. It’s a real cost, and for a lot of Canadian businesses, it’s the silent killer eating away at growth and profits.

Sooner or later, every leadership team hits this wall. The big question lands in your lap: Do you fix up the house you’re living in, or do you bulldoze it and build something new?

We see this all the time as Fractional CTOs. Here’s what you really need to know.

The Cost of Doing Nothing

Let’s keep it simple. Technical debt is like a loan.

• The principal: shortcuts you took to ship the product fast a few years back.
• The interest: the time and money you waste now, working around those shortcuts.

Don’t pay down the principal? The interest swallows your whole budget. Before you know it, you’re not a software company anymore—you’re a maintenance shop. That’s a bad spot.

Option A: Refactoring (Renovation)

Refactoring is like rewiring the house but leaving the walls where they are. You’re not changing what the software does; you’re changing how it’s built.

Go this route if:

1. The core logic works. Your business rules make sense, customers are happy enough, but the code’s a mess.
2. You can’t afford downtime. You’ve got to keep things running and keep shipping, even while you clean up.
3. Cash is tight. You need to fix things bit by bit, not all at once.

The usual play? We like the “Strangler Fig” pattern. You build new microservices around your old system, piece by piece, until the old core quietly fades away. It’s low risk, and your CFO sleeps easier.

Option B: Rebuilding (Bulldoze It)

Rebuilding means exactly what it sounds like. You freeze the old system and start new, from scratch. Developers love this—new tools, new tech, shiny everything.

But only go this way if:

1. The tech is dead. You’re running on end-of-life platforms with no security patches left. You just can’t stay there.
2. Your business has changed. You built for one business model, but now you’re on another. Patching the old code to fit new needs is a lost cause.
3. You can wait. You’re willing to pause new features for a while, in exchange for a platform that’ll move a lot faster for years to come.

Heads up—rebuilds almost always go over budget. You need a fixed-cost blueprint and tight oversight. Otherwise, that six-month project drags on for a year and a half.

The Verdict

Here’s the deal: don’t just ask your developers. They’ll usually vote for a rebuild because writing new code is more fun than reading old code.

You need a real opinion:

• If your old code is slowing you down by 20%, refactor.
• If it’s blocking you from new markets or putting your data at risk, rebuild.

If you’re tired of guessing, we can help. At ERMI Labs, we’ll audit your code, talk to your team, and give you a clear ROI for both paths—no hype, just facts. Book your assessment and take the guesswork out of your next move.