"Your mission, should you choose to accept it..." A stakeholder has brought you a failing project and wants you to save it. Do you accept your mission? Do you scrap the project and rewrite it? Deciding to stabilize a failing project can be a scary challenge. By the end of this talk, you will have tangible steps to take to incrementally refactor a failing application in place. We will also be on the lookout for warning signs of too much tech debt, learn when tech debt is OK, and walk away with useful language to use when advocating to pay down the debt.