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Navigating technical debt without sacrificing feature work
Technical debt is a reality of product development and the choice between feature work and technical debt is not a binary one.
Leverage your technical product manager to maintain a coherent balance between feature development and technical debt with an eye on long term product health!
Technical debt arises when shortcuts or quick fixes are taken during development to expedite delivery, resulting in accrued complexity and potential future costs. These costs could come in the form of higher cloud provider bills due to inefficient usage, or increased time for developing a new feature on top of legacy code. Technical debt can manifest in various forms: from outdated frameworks and inefficient code to postponed refactoring and scalability issues. While it's a natural byproduct of rapid development cycles, it poses risks to long-term product health and agility.
1. Don't brush tech debt under the carpet
Tech debt needs to be visible and any pain experienced as part of development should remain top of mind. Label it tech debt stories, create a swimlanes or even a dedicated board separated either by service or product to capture these in summary view, just as you would for feature work.
2. Dedicated burn down time
To effectively manage technical debt, prioritize debt reduction alongside new feature development. Allocate dedicated sprints or sprint points for refactoring and technical improvements to maintain code quality and performance. Break down large refactoring activities into smaller, manageable tasks. Focus on areas critical to product stability and performance while minimizing disruption to ongoing development.
3. Attack tech debt in small pieces
Have 1/2 day extra in a sprint? Unable to dedicate larger chunks of time for dedicated tech debt reduction? Encourage your team to draw from the tech debt board to continue to burn it down in small pieces - don't forget to celebrate this good hygiene behaviour in your end-of-sprint ceremonies! While this may not solve larger refactoring needs, you can chip away at the smaller annoyances.
4. Measure and celebrate progress
Measure levels of technical debt by separating sprint velocity measurements for new feature development and tech debt. Incorporate velocity callouts in your sprint retrospective to celebrate progress with your team in both areas. As part of retrospectives, don't forget to dedicate 5-10 minutes to discuss any callouts from the team on work that had added complexity due to accumulated tech debt. Make tech debt stories out of these immediately.
5. Bring your partners along with you on the journey
Leverage you technical product manager and help them help you to educate your partners, including executives and business teams, on the importance of balancing feature development with technical debt management. Foster a culture that values long-term product sustainability and encourages proactive debt reduction strategies.