Tackling Technical Debt Effectively during Scrum
- Leonie Garrecht
- Jan 8
- 2 min read
Technical debt is inevitable in fast-paced product development, but managing it efficiently is key to maintaining long-term product quality and team productivity. Here’s how you can address technical debt within a Scrum framework:
1. Acknowledge and Prioritize Technical Debt
Ignoring technical debt doesn’t make it disappear. Include it in your Product Backlog, prioritize it alongside feature work, and quantify its impact on velocity, quality, and scalability.
2. Integrate Debt Management into Sprints
Dedicate a portion of each Sprint to addressing technical debt. This prevents debt from snowballing and ensures continuous improvement. Many teams use a 70/30 or 80/20 split between feature work and refactoring.
3. Make Debt Visible with Metrics
Use metrics like code complexity, defect rates, or time-to-market to track technical debt. Share these metrics with stakeholders to emphasize the need for resolution.
4. Empower Developers to Refactor Regularly
Encourage developers to address minor issues as part of their daily workflow. Use Scrum events like Sprint Planning and Retrospectives to discuss debt management openly.
5. Invest in Automation and CI/CD
Automated testing and continuous integration pipelines help identify technical debt early, reducing the effort required to fix it later.
6. Balance Stakeholder Expectations
Work closely with stakeholders to balance delivering new features and reducing technical debt. Clear communication about the long-term benefits of addressing debt helps secure their buy-in.
7. Leverage the Retrospective for Lessons Learned
Reflect on how technical debt accumulated and develop strategies to prevent similar issues in the future. For instance, tightening the Definition of Done can reduce shortcuts in the codebase.
Managing technical debt is not just about cleanup—it’s about enabling sustainable growth and innovation. Teams that proactively manage debt deliver better products, faster.
How does your team handle technical debt in product development? Let’s share ideas and experiences!
Comments