Reducing Technical Debt: CodeScene Rollout Steps that Work

A Strategic 5-Week Onboarding Framework for Engineering Teams seeking to prevent and reduce Technical Debt.

Week 1: Establish Baseline & Set Goals

Create Your First Project & Gain Situational Awareness

  • Create your first CodeScene project

  • Run an initial analysis

  • Download a Code Health Overview PDF report (details here)

  • Subscribe to the weekly Code Health Overview report (details here)

Optimise Your Project Setup Prior to Onboarding

  • Navigate to the project configuration page to exclude third party code (instructions here)

  • Configure teams, map aliases and mark ex-developers (instructions here)

  • Re-run the analysis for updated insights (instructions here)

Nominate Pilot Team(s) and Set a Goal

  • Nominate one or two teams best placed for achieving the objective of reducing technical debt fast

  • Filter the dashboard by the chosen team and record their current Hotspot Code Health and set a goal to improve this by 1.0 in the next 3 months. E.g. Move from 5.6 to 6.6.

  • Share this article internally to communicate the benefits

Week 2: Stabilise the Codebase & Empower Developers

  • Enable the Pull Request integration with the bare minimum profile to immediately stabilise code quality and prevent new technical debt being introduced. (see setup instructions)

  • Share this 3-Step Developer Onboarding guide with the team(s) for installing the IDE extension and achieving a CodeScene certification

Week 3: Drive Adoption & Address Blockers

Adoption is the foundation for measurable improvement. Address any blockers immediately

  • Verify 100% of nominated developers have installed the IDE extension and completed the CodeScene Academy courses

  • Review PR Statistics to check whether feedback is being followed or ignored (instructions here)

Week 4: Bi-weekly Reviews for Staying On Track

  • Assess team KPIs against your 3-month goal in the Project Dashboard. On track? Celebrate wins and jump to Week 5. Off track? Revisit adoption steps are carried out.

  • Once more than 80% of code health issues are prevented, activate the Clean Code Collective PR Profile (see in “PR Statistics”)

Week 5: Codebase Stablised, Let’s Hit The Goal

You've completed the most important onboarding steps to prevent new technical debt, great job! Now it’s time to make a real impact.

To reach your Hotspot Code Health Goal, you'll need to go further by making high-impact refactorings.

  • Continue assessing team KPIs against your 3-month goal bi-weekly in the Project Dashboard. On track? Celebrate wins and begin onboarding additional teams. Off track? Revisit adoption steps are carried out.

Success Insight: Teams that follow this structured approach see measurable code health improvements within the first sprint cycle. Teams leveraging CodeScene’s MCP Server & CodeScene ACE see measurable code health improvements within minutes