Build a Technical Debt Register for a Legacy Banking Monolith

FreeVerified credential4 weeksAdvanced

Overview

What this challenge is about.

Run 8 engineer interviews, scan a legacy monolith with SonarQube, and classify 40+ technical debt items to earn your verifiable certificate.

The scenario

The bank (Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) regulated, public-listed parent) is preparing for an open-banking API mandate in 18 months — the monolith cannot meet the API throughput targets without paying down the worst debt.

CredentialBlockchain-anchored

ShareableLinkedIn-ready

LanguageEnglish

PaceSelf-paced

The Brief

What you'll do, and what you'll demonstrate.

Make a 22-year-old banking monolith's technical debt visible, quantified, and quadrant-classified so leadership can fund the right paydown work.

Earning criteria — what you'll demonstrate

Classify debt using Fowler's deliberate/inadvertent × prudent/reckless quadrant
Quantify carrying cost from engineer time and incident data
Use SonarQube findings to triangulate engineer-reported debt
Translate technical debt into a budget-request artefact non-engineers act on

Program Fit

Where this fits in your program.

Sharpens the same skills your degree expects you to demonstrate.

Technical Debt Management

Master · Software Engineering

Strong alignment

This challenge maps to Technical Debt Management at the Master level. It sharpens the same practical skills your coursework expects — but in a real industry context with actual constraints and deliverables.

Skills

Skills you'll demonstrate.

Each one shows up on your verified credential.

Careers

Career paths this challenge builds toward

Completing this challenge demonstrates skills that transfer directly to these roles:

Career paths this builds toward

Canonical roles

Tech Lead
Between an engineering team that wants to ship and a product organization that wants to plan stands the tech lead. The role is technical first — you're still writing code, reviewing pull requests, and authoring the RFC that settles a design debate — but the harder part is influence: setting a quality bar without becoming a bottleneck, mentoring without rescuing, pushing back on a deadline with evidence rather than instinct. Cloud platforms and CI/CD pipelines are table stakes; what distinguishes a strong tech lead is how they handle disagreement and how their team grows under them. Students who enjoyed being the group project leader for the right reasons often arrive here naturally. Growth comes from leading real projects whose outcomes you can be honest about.
Engineering Leadership

One more thing

You can put a credential on your CV by Friday.

Start this challenge