Sorry for a very late reply. Usually when people are new to management they don't quite see the forest for the trees. I certainly was. Usually it's easy to com

Sorry for a very late reply. Usually when people are new to management they don't quite see the forest for the trees. I certainly was. Usually it's easy to communicate business needs because above all else, managers typically have those thrown at them from day one. If you can highlight the ones ones that match up with your company's goals then you may have an in. For example Eliminating Technical Debt Company Goal: Decreasing time to Marketplace Supporting Evidence: Feature X was delayed by weeks because the $WIDGET1 was written in an old framework that is no longer supported and no one here knows. Our next project involves modifying $WIDGET2 which is in the same framework and will surely delays us similarly if we don't apply the changes we made to $WIDGET1. Contrived example, but you get the point. If you can't formulate that argument, perhaps the technical debt shouldn't be resolved yet and your manager has a point (even if he doesn't know it)