How to Reduce Technical Debt During Liferay DXP Upgrades: A Modernization Guide

Digital Experience Platforms (DXPs) hold the promise of continuous evolution — richer capabilities, modern digital experiences, and better scalability. Solutions like Liferay DXP embody that promise, offering modular architecture, headless APIs, and integration flexibility that make modernization approachable even for legacy environments.

But in many enterprises, there’s a disconnect. Vendors release improvements rapidly — yet enterprises remain far behind. And in that gap, technical debt accumulates silently, quietly turning upgrades into multi-year projects instead of incremental improvements.

While leaders debate UX, personalization and cloud strategy, the silent challenge remains buried deep: unsupported customizations, outdated codebases, and rushed tactical fixes that slowly turn platforms brittle.

This is the hidden cost no one likes to acknowledge — but many eventually pay.

Release Fatigue: Fast Vendor Innovation vs. Slow Enterprise Adoption

Liferay, like many leading DXPs, evolves continuously. Each major release brings enhancements — whether modular components, improved headless support, better performance, or updated security frameworks. Read more here.

However, large enterprises often grapple with:

• lengthy change-approval cycles
• multiple business units using the platform differently
• extensive customizations and integrations
• limited internal bandwidth for continuous updates

The result: while vendors might be at version 12.x, many enterprises remain on older versions. This version gap leads to:

• security and compliance risks as support phases out
• growing fragility — integrations and custom code begin to break as APIs change
• inability to leverage new features — innovation stalls
• multi-version upgrades that are expensive, risky, and time-consuming

Each skipped release doesn’t just add an upgrade — it multiplies effort. It’s like skipping dental checkups for years and then needing a full (and painful) rebuild.

Unsupported Customizations → Upgrade Blockers

Customization isn’t the enemy — lack of governance is. Many legacy projects accumulate:

• hard-coded overrides of standard components
• duplicated portlets and services per business unit
• ad-hoc integrations bypassing standard APIs
• UI overrides buried deep in templates

Though these may seem fast to implement, they soon become sources of upgrade-blockers. Enterprise after enterprise finds:

• Every upgrade causes regressions
• Maintenance becomes a nightmare — months of refactoring before even considering a version bump
• Critical knowledge is trapped in tribal memory — if a key dev leaves, no one understands why/how things work
• Innovation grinds to a halt — new features require rebuilding what was broken instead of extending what works

If upgrades concurrently force a “freeze everything” moment, you’re not delivering velocity — you’re accumulating risk.

Why “Upgrade-Friendly Engineering” Matters

To avoid becoming hostage to technical debt, enterprises need to build with the next upgrade in mind — not just the current feature. That means adopting patterns that make future upgrades smooth:

• Platform-first architecture: favor out-of-the-box (OOTB) components or vendor-recommended customization approaches over heavy overrides
• Modular custom components: build reusable modules, not one-off code by business unit
• API-first integrations & headless delivery: decouple presentation from backend, making integrations resilient to change
• Continuous regression testing & quality baseline: automated testing ensures upgrades don’t break existing functionality

Enterprises that treat their DXP as a product, not a one-off project, win — because they build for tomorrow’s releases, not just today’s bug-list.

Plan Once, Reuse Everywhere — Composable Architecture Approach

When each department builds independently on the DXP, you end up with a patchwork: redundant services, inconsistent UX, and fragmentation.

A composable architecture — one that’s modular, reusable, and governed — flips that. Benefits include:

• Shared UI components and services (auth, search, forms, notifications)
• Centralized content models and taxonomy
• Consistent UX across channels and brands
• One update benefiting the entire enterprise, instead of many fixes in many places

This approach transforms the DXP into a scalable enterprise platform, not just a collection of siloed portals.

Why Liferay DXP Matters — If You Use It Right

Not all platforms handle modernization equally. Liferay becomes a powerful foundation when you leverage Liferay. 

• Modular, extensible architecture: Enables incremental modernization without “rip-and-replace.” 
• Robust integration capabilities: REST/GraphQL APIs and integration frameworks make it easier to decouple from legacy systems. 
• Headless and client-extension support: Lets teams deliver modern front-end experiences while keeping backend logic stable.
• Enterprise-grade services: Supporting multi-brand, multi-site, multi-tenant deployments — ideal for large, regulated, or complex organisations.

With Liferay’s architecture plus upgrade-aware engineering practices, upgrades become manageable — even in the most complex environments.

Where Most Enterprises Fail — and What to Do Instead

Many get stuck because:

• They don’t know where technical debt lives
• They don’t have shared architecture standards or governance
• Every upgrade is a “big bang,” forcing pauses and freeze periods

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

The difference is strategic investment: build once, reuse often. Refactor gradually, upgrade confidently.

How Veriday Helps — Turning Upgrades Into Business Accelerators

Veriday brings deep expertise in upgrading and modernizing Liferay deployments, especially for large enterprises in finance, insurance, manufacturing, and public sector. Using a proven methodology — refined over dozens of clients — Veriday helps:

• Surface hidden technical debt through architectural review and code-quality analysis
• Create modular, reusable component frameworks across business units
• Define modernization roadmaps that tie technical improvements to business value
• Manage incremental upgrades — not big rewrites — minimizing disruption

By combining Liferay’s modern core with Veriday’s upgrade-friendly engineering and disciplined delivery, organizations can finally make upgrades predictable, safe, and value-driven.

The Technical Debt Playbook — A Smarter Upgrade Strategy

1. Assess current state — catalogue customizations, dependencies, version gaps, integration fragility
2. Baseline quality & performance — using metrics from APM tools, static code analysis, uptime logs
3. Map business value — identify high-impact modules, frequently used portals, and revenue-critical systems
4. Build a “heat map” of risk vs. value — prioritize low-risk + high value areas first (quick wins) 
5. Modernize incrementally — adopt composable components, consolidate duplicate modules, refactor one slice at a time
6. Upgrade continuously — enable a cadence of regular minor versions instead of occasional big jumps
7. Govern & reuse — enforce architectural standards and reuse common components across teams

No more “rip-and-replace.” No more frozen development. Just a clear path to long-term agility.

Final Thought

Upgrades alone aren’t the problem. Unmanaged technical debt is.

But with the right foundation — Liferay DXP — and the right approach — upgrade-friendly engineering + composable architecture — upgrades can become business accelerators instead of risk events.

If you’re ready to move from backlog to innovation, from debt to value — it’s time to change how you think about DXP upgrades.

Ready to Get Ahead of Technical Debt?

Veriday helps enterprises modernize Liferay architectures and upgrade with confidence.
Request your Liferay Upgrade & Modernization Blueprint and start turning technical debt into a competitive advantage.