How to Prioritize Technical Debt in Your Backlog

What is Technical Debt?

Technical debt is the future cost of taking shortcuts now:

• Intentional: Shipping fast, knowing you'll refactor later
• Unintentional: Accumulated from poor decisions or changing requirements

The Cost of Technical Debt

Unpaid debt compounds:

• Slower feature development
• More bugs
• Harder onboarding for new developers
• Increased risk of outages

When to Pay Down Debt

Pay Now If:

• It's blocking critical work
• It affects customer experience
• Security risk exists
• Developer productivity is significantly impacted

Pay Later If:

• The code rarely changes
• The impact is minimal
• Bigger priorities exist
• You might replace it anyway

Frameworks for Prioritization

The Debt Quadrant

Plot debt on two axes:

The 20% Rule

Reserve 20% of each sprint for debt:

10 points capacity:
8 points: Feature work
2 points: Tech debt

The Pain-Driven Approach

Track debt by how often it causes pain:

Mixing Debt with Features

Don't hide debt in a separate list. Integrate it:

• Compare debt items to features using same framework
• Make debt visible to stakeholders
• Celebrate debt payoff like feature launches

Preventing New Debt

Code Review Standards

• No shortcuts without documented rationale
• Debt must be logged when incurred
• Follow-up ticket required

Definition of Done

Include debt considerations:

• [ ] No new tech debt introduced (or logged if unavoidable)
• [ ] Existing debt touched was improved or logged

Use reBacklog to manage your backlog—features and debt together.

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