Facilitated by Toks B.

Every team accumulates technical debt — the question is whether it’s managed deliberately or ignored until it becomes a crisis. This session gives Agile practitioners (not just engineers) a working vocabulary and a practical approach for keeping technical debt visible and manageable.

We’ll cover how to make technical debt visible in the backlog, how to have the “we need to pay this down” conversation with a Product Owner or stakeholder who only sees features, and how to build a sustainable rhythm for addressing debt without ever getting a dedicated “tech debt sprint.”

Learning Objectives

Understand what technical debt is (and isn’t) and why it accumulates even on healthy teams.
Learn techniques for making technical debt visible in the Product Backlog.
Practice framing technical debt conversations in terms of business risk and delivery speed, not just “code cleanliness.”
Explore sustainable patterns for paying down debt alongside feature work.

Who Should Attend?

Scrum Masters, Product Owners, and Delivery/Engineering Managers who need to balance feature delivery with the long-term health of the codebase.

Key Takeaways

A vocabulary for discussing technical debt with both engineers and business stakeholders.
Techniques for keeping debt visible instead of invisible in the backlog.
A sustainable pattern for addressing debt without needing a dedicated “cleanup sprint.