Why Technical Debt Builds Up in Dynamics 365

Technical debt sounds like negligence. It comes from decisions that were reasonable at the moment they were made. And from the fact that nobody touches or questions them again later.

The first source: the quick way under time pressure

A customer urgently needs an additional column on the form. It is created without a description, with the default prefix that happens to be active. That takes 2 minutes instead of 4 and works perfectly.

Two years later, someone else sits in front of a table with 80 columns, 75 of which have no description. Which of them are still used can be answered in only one way: you have to trace each one through forms, views, business rules or flows, using the show dependencies function. Column usage in JavaScript or other code is problematic here. Only code analysis helps then. That is exactly the interest payment on the 2 minutes saved per column.

The second source: staff changes without handover

Dataverse environments outlive the teams that built them. An external service provider sets up the solution, an internal employee takes it over. That person changes jobs and a new service provider joins.

Every change costs knowledge that was never documented anywhere. What remains is the technical implementation without the reasoning behind it. The question "why was it built like this" then has no addressee anymore. When in doubt, nobody dares to remove anything.

The third source: customizations that survive after their reason is gone

A JavaScript hides a column because a process required it back then. The process was changed later and the script stayed. A business rule sets a default value that a flow already sets today. Both keep running.

Such leftovers are harmless one by one. In sum they make changes unpredictable. Whoever touches a column no longer knows which places react to it.

The fourth source: technology changes of the platform

Microsoft keeps developing the platform. What was the recommended approach five years ago has been replaced today. Classic workflows were replaced by Power Automate flows. The old object model in JavaScript was replaced by the current client API. The Common Data Service connector was replaced by the Dataverse connector.

None of this stops working from one day to the next. And because no moment forces the rebuild, it does not happen. Until it has to happen under time pressure.

How to read the state

A few figures can be determined from a solution export, and they give a surprisingly clear picture.

• Documentation level: What share of your own columns, tables and processes has a description? A rule of thumb from practice: below twenty percent, a takeover by a new team becomes more expensive.
• Prefix consistency: One dominant name prefix, or several with similar shares from many small fragment solutions?
• Share of replaced technologies: How many classic workflows still run, or how many scripts hang on the old object model?
• Orphaned components: Which web resources are no longer referenced by any form or ribbon?

None of these figures is a verdict on its own. Together they show whether a solution has been maintained or has just grown.

What is worth tackling

Not everything. Paying off technical debt costs time that is missing elsewhere. Some legacy items will never be touched again.

The backlog can also be reduced in everyday work, without applying for a project of its own. How that works is described under solution hygiene.

Two categories have priority. First, everything that touches security or data loss: delete permissions that are too broad, or cascading delete rules in unexpected places. Second, everything that blocks an upcoming step. Whoever wants to migrate has to touch replaced technologies, like it or not.

The rest is a question of opportunity. Whoever rebuilds a table anyway documents its columns along the way. That is much cheaper than a separate cleanup campaign that nobody will approve a budget for.