Why Your View on Technical Debt Is Wrong?
Technical debt is a concept we are all familiar with when building digital products. It’s something we have to live with. As product managers and digital leaders, we must understand how it works. It is a skill in itself to develop. Not how to solve it but how to manage it.
The biggest misconception is that it’s a technical issue. Whatever people think, Technical debt impacts strategy and product. And it affects all other company goals.
Yet most people don’t understand it, or they don’t want to.
Ignorance is a blessing, but not in this case.
Let me show a classical relationship between the engineering team and strategy.
A classic technical debt story
Once upon a time, a product team wanted to expand the capability of one feature used by several clients. They put it on the roadmap. The stakeholders agreed and sponsored it with some modifications.
It will not be a roadmap exercise without change from the stakeholders.
The product team turned to the engineering team to explain their plan. They wanted to run a simple exercise: estimating how long it will take to make the roadmap a reality.
The engineering team analyses the strategy and explains their concerns. In their first analysis, they see the impact on one product’s area and the code quality.
“We must address the technical debt in this part of the code.”
Release the Kraken!
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