Facilitated by TJ Badru.

Technical debt is a silent cost that can undermine Agile success if left unchecked. Our Technical Debt Management for Agilists session this September will guide you through strategies to identify, prioritize, and reduce technical debt while maintaining delivery velocity and product quality.

Why Technical Debt Matters

Every shortcut, workaround, or rushed release adds to technical debt. While some debt is intentional, unmanaged debt can lead to:

• Slower delivery cycles and rising costs

• Reduced team morale as legacy issues accumulate

• Increased risk of defects and outages

The Scrum Guide emphasizes that transparency is key to sustainable development.

Key Practices for Managing Technical Debt

1. Make Debt Visible

Track debt items in your backlog alongside user stories and defects. Tools like Atlassian Jira or Azure DevOps help teams create clear debt registers.

2. Prioritize Strategically

Evaluate debt based on its impact on stability, performance, and team efficiency. The Agile Alliance offers insights on measuring value when reducing debt.

3. Incorporate Debt into Sprints

Allocate capacity in each sprint to refactor or clean up code. Mountain Goat Software suggests balancing new feature delivery with “keeping the codebase healthy”.

4. Automate Testing and Quality Gates

Invest in automated tests, code reviews, and CI/CD pipelines to prevent the accumulation of new debt. Explore practices in continuous inspection on SonarQube’s site.

Cultural Aspects of Debt Reduction

• Promote Psychological Safety: Encourage open conversations about debt without blame.

• Educate Stakeholders: Help product owners and executives understand the long-term savings of paying down debt.

• Celebrate Small Wins: Acknowledge teams when they reduce major bottlenecks or improve code quality.

For further reading, see this Harvard Business Review article on balancing speed and sustainability in software.

Preparing for the Session

1. Review your current backlog for hidden or untracked technical debt.

2. Identify areas where rushed work has created friction for your team.

3. Bring examples to discuss how to balance remediation with roadmap delivery.

Join us for Technical Debt Management for Agilists to gain actionable techniques for balancing delivery speed with sustainable quality.

Reserve your spot.

Let’s learn how to turn technical debt from a liability into a strategic opportunity.