Industry comparison data for technical debt — headline cost figures, DORA performance bands, and typical debt ratios by company stage and industry.
20–40% of technology-estate value is typically tied up in technical debt (McKinsey Digital, 2020). Left unmanaged, debt is modeled to drive a 25–33% velocity decline within 12 months as complexity compounds.
The four DORA delivery metrics, across all four performance tiers.
| Metric | Elite | High | Medium | Low |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Deployment frequency | On-demand | Weekly–monthly | Monthly–6 months | Fewer than 1 / 6mo |
| Lead time for changes | Under 1 day | 1 day – 1 week | 1 week – 1 month | 1–6 months |
| Change failure rate | 0–15% | 16–30% | 31–45% | 46–60% |
| Mean time to recovery | Under 1 hour | Under 1 day | 1 day – 1 week | 1 week – 6 months |
Source: Google / DORA State of DevOps, 2019–2024 (20,000–40,000 respondents annually).
| Stage | Typical range | Target |
|---|---|---|
| Startups | 15–30% | Below 15% |
| Scale-ups | 10–25% | Below 10% |
| Enterprises | 8–20% | Below 5% |
| Agencies / consultancies | 20–40% | Below 15% |
Illustrative figures at typical debt levels, using a $150,000 fully-loaded salary assumption. Run the Cost Calculator for your own numbers.
| Engineering team size | Typical annual debt cost | FTEs wasted |
|---|---|---|
| 5 | $190,000 | 0.5 |
| 10 | $380,000 | 1.0 |
| 25 | $950,000 | 2.5 |
| 50 | $1,900,000 | 5.0 |
| 100 | $3,800,000 | 10.0 |
| 200 | $7,600,000 | 20.0 |
| Industry | Typical debt range | Risk tolerance |
|---|---|---|
| Fintech | 25–40% | Low |
| HealthTech | 20–35% | Very low (HIPAA / FDA) |
| E-commerce | 20–30% | Moderate |
| SaaS (B2B) | 15–25% | Moderate |
| Enterprise software | 25–45% | High |
| Consumer mobile | 15–25% | Low |
December 2022. Synthesis across multiple US market sources. Figures are national-economy scale, not directly attributable to any single organization.
2018. Survey of 1,000+ developers and executives across five countries. Self-reported time allocation, subject to recall bias.
2019–2024 annual research, 20,000–40,000 respondents. Delivery-performance benchmarks, not debt-specific, but strongly correlated.
October 2020. Survey of 50 CIOs at large organizations — small sample, enterprise-skewed.