The core of the issue is usually the team culture, mindset, and expectations. If things are as chaotic as you say, then you need to identify what is the cause o

The core of the issue is usually the team culture, mindset, and expectations. If things are as chaotic as you say, then you need to identify what is the cause of the chaos. Some possible scenarios: 1. Ignorant leadership has led to a culture of not respecting software engineering best practices. 2. Engineering team is ignorant of software engineering best practices. 3. Team understands best practices but culture is such that there is no time/incentive to implement them. This could be due to people being overworked and as result, prioritizing for delivery and only being able to focus on things other than fixing tech debt. It could also be due to the fact that bonuses are given to those that are implementing new features into the product, therefore creating environment that values delivery over proper software engineering. You need to figure out what the reason is for your team's tech debt chaos and only then will you be able to fix the problems. There are also degrees of tech debt that you need to consider (architectural-level tech debt vs unit-level tech debt) that will play into what things you can do to rectify the issues and prevent them in the future.