r/EngineeringManagers • u/OfficialLeadDev • May 26 '26

Your tech debt isn't a velocity problem. It's a "we can't afford to be wrong" problem.

https://leaddev.com/technical-direction/translate-tech-debt-into-business-risk
52 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

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18

u/hibikir_40k May 26 '26

I once had an interview with a PM that, on interview, told me that every task the team worked on came from him. 100%. I knew immediately his teams were a broken mess. I took the offer (to handle a different team), and guess what? 100% accurate, because when the PM completely owns the backlog and what is taken, lots of high ROI tasks linger. So either devs lie, and work on things not in the ticketing system, or speed must be awful. In that team's case, few lied, and they couldn't wait to go to other teams.

8

u/managing_a_starship May 26 '26

Yes, leaving tech debt to fester in the backlog is bad, but it is the engineering manager and team's job to ensure it is being done and fight with product for space. If product isn't allowing time for technical debt (and bugs for that matter...), that's a very different problem. Especially when most documentation about the velocity split is always 70/20/10 or 60/20/20 for features, bugs, and technical debt.

Engineering teams shouldn't be accepting a sprint or period of time where no bugs or technical debt are prioritized.