If you are using the original definition for technical debt which was the side effect of making decisions with limited knowledge then that is addressed through measures such as refactoring. However, if you use the term to include waste from poor quality practices then the answer is to improve the team's approach to quality over time.
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Luis BrancoCEO| Business Insight, Consultores de Gestão, LdªCarcavelos, Lisboa, Portugal
Nyasha Genius Kwenda Excellent provocation! Managing technical debt in fast-paced delivery cycles requires more than simple prioritization — it demands strategic awareness and organizational discipline.
An effective approach can be structured around three complementary levels:
1. Visible and Shared Mapping
Practices such as a technical debt register and evolutionary architecture visualization make technical debt visible to all stakeholders — including non-technical ones.
Key principle: What is not seen, is not prioritized.
2. Classification by Impact and Systemic Risk
More than just estimating effort, it’s essential to assess the impact of debt on:
- future delivery velocity
- risk of production failures
- degradation of user experience
- maintenance cost and hidden dependencies
Often, a “small” piece of debt carries a high interest rate and requires immediate attention.
3. Integration into the Backlog and Product Rhythm
Instead of treating debt as an isolated technical block, integrating it into the value stream — within epics, sprints, and technical stories — is a recommended practice.
Typical actions include:
- Boy Scout Rule: “leave the code better than you found it” (continuous improvement)
- Refactoring Days: regular and visible cycles on the roadmap
- Decision Review: revisiting technical decisions that led to intentional debt
Final note: In more mature organizations, technical debt is treated as strategic debt — with conscious decisions about what to defer, why, and until when, based on clear “repayment” criteria aligned with product vision and business goals.
I usually treat technical debt as a known risk—logged, reviewed, and sized like any backlog item. During sprint planning, we reserve a percentage of capacity (usually 10–20%) to address high-impact debt. Regular debt reviews with devs and architects help keep it visible and aligned with business priorities. Transparency and discipline are key.
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Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
Technical Debt is unacceptable from the point of view of quality which is one of the pillars in approaches like agile software development. Agile software development is an evolution of object oriented software development and the basement is software engineering. Saying that it will accelerate delivery is a missunderstading. It is a matter of cost of quality. Saving Changes...
Like other risk management, it comes down to a combination of probability and impact. It can be hard to quantify but value judgements can be made. If there is an issue with subsystem X, that issue is isolated to its own internal functions. If the issue is subsystem Y, none of the hosted applications will function and everything comes to a halt. Probability may also be judged by things like our burndown rate of critical bugs or historical supplier performance.
Where specific unknowns can have a very large cascading effect, I try to look for mitigation approaches such as lab simulations prior to finding issues closer to delivery, contingency plans like making the product backwards compatible with old parts in case the new ones aren't ready, and building in some schedule buffer for the issues uncovered close to planned delivery. Saving Changes...
Personnellement, je suis une méthode en 3 étapes :
1- D'abord il faut les documenter et les rendre visible. La transparence est la première étape vers l’action.
2- Puis évaluer les risques et classer les dettes avec une priorisation objective, hiérarchisation des éléments les plus critiques.
3- Enfin, partager avec les stakeholders de leurs impact à moyen et long terme pour obtenir l’adhésion nécessaire pour les traiter progressivement Saving Changes...
Senior Projects Manager | Field & Marten AssociatesNew Westminster, British Columbia, Canada
Nyasha, the first step is to categorize the technical debt—because not all debt is created equal. We typically use three criteria for this:
1) Impact: How it affects performance, scalability, reliability, and developer velocity.
2) Visibility: Whether it’s surfaced and actively slowing us down or quietly accumulating risk.
3) Intentional vs. Unintentional: Was it a conscious tradeoff or just legacy code or poor practice?
Once categorized, we quantify the cost. Looking at things like how often it causes bugs, blocks delivery, or adds friction. From there, we embed the most critical items into the product roadmap.
We also maintain a living tech debt register. It’s key to keeping the team aligned and making sure we’re not just documenting, but actively addressing the most impactful items, ideally alongside feature work, or during natural breaks between cycles.
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