By "external" technical debt, do you mean crufty old 3rd-party components? Why not deal with those by just swapping out that one component? edit: Nvm, realize

By "external" technical debt, do you mean crufty old 3rd-party components? Why not deal with those by just swapping out that one component? edit: Nvm, realize you're probably talking about something like migrating off of VB6, or ditching a mainframe.