How can you prioritize technical debt in the Product Backlog to maximize business value?

Tech Debts is like a 'karma cycle', it comes around at some point of time. And this is the answer to it. Let it come around at its time so it would align with business value. As I see tech debt in a positive manner, it should be something we did good but could have done better. Or something we got to know that it could have been done even better. Its not a bug/defect/flaw/vulnerability, if it has caused any of these then its not tech debt it is what it has caused. And it should be treated like that ( at least internally) It aligns itself with Agile Principles 1. Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility. 2. The team reflects on how to become more effective, then adjusts accordingly.

Another important aspect of business value is the avoidance of loss; of lost revenue, customers, lost legal cases, lost prestige, loss through inefficiencies, loss through injury, damage or death, loss of expertise - almost anything that could be lost.

In product backlog there are always items that move the dail for comany and there are items that seems to move the dial but wont. So identification of such through OST is a great starting point along with discovery after that prioritizing and completing the task will suffice in many cases

Business value encompasses measurable benefits, including revenue, cost reduction, customer satisfaction, and strategic alignment. In software development, it involves prioritizing tasks that contribute to the company's goals, ensuring a high return on investment. Beyond financial aspects, business value considers market competitiveness, regulatory compliance, and adaptability to industry trends. Effectively managing technical debt, meeting customer needs, and aligning with the broader business strategy are crucial for optimizing business value. Regular evaluation and adjustment of priorities ensure agility in a dynamic business environment.

Just like credit card debt, technical debt can have a wide range of factors which help determine the business value of eliminating the debt. Some technical debt has a recurring cost. For instance, if there is a known inefficiency in the build process that makes it take 5 min longer than if we fixed it. I compare this to a minimum payment that could be eliminated. Other technical debt items may have compound interest. If, for example, an api could be refactored to achieve the same function in a single call as opposed to multiple calls, the cost of that debt will compound as new consumers are added and additional calls are made. With these thoughts, the "cost of not doing" becomes the way technical debt is prioritized.

Strictly speaking, technical debt has no direct impact on the product; all impacts are indirect. It doesn't. of itself, reduce quality or reliability, cause security breaches or compliance issues (despite the claims made here); those would be defects not debt. What it does is make it harder and more costly to achieve almost anything we DO want to achieve.

Technical debt can impede business value by slowing down development, increasing maintenance costs, and introducing the risk of defects. Addressing technical debt is crucial for maintaining and maximizing long-term business value.

it's like something normal and it's always happening in all industries for example: rush decisions, evolved requirements, legacy code and systems, etc. Due to those points, sometimes the technical debt is raised due to the team morale and their focus as they don't have clear requirements for example. Or asking for speed development with less quality for example. By those examples we are part of the team debt and increasing the technical debts in a non controlled way.

Technical debt can significantly impact business value by impeding development efficiency and delaying feature delivery. Accumulated shortcuts and suboptimal code slow down the release of valuable features, potentially resulting in missed market opportunities and reduced competitiveness. Technical debt compromises product quality, leading to customer dissatisfaction and increased risk of churn. As debt accumulates, maintaining and evolving the software becomes challenging, elevating the risk of security vulnerabilities and compliance issues. Addressing technical debt is crucial for sustaining and enhancing business value, ensuring efficient development, timely feature delivery, and maintaining a robust, customer-satisfying product.

To maximize business value, the impact of the technical debt needs to be assessed, such as those affecting critical functionalities or hindering future development. From that standpoint, you need to gauge the potential risks and costs associated with leaving the debt unresolved. Likewise, you will want to prioritize the items that offer the most significant return on investment in terms of efficiency gains, improved scalability and reduced maintenance.

Once you've re-classified all the things that are defects or product backlog, there are still areas of code that are functionally correct but are one way or another poorly designed. The easiest way to prioritise this is known as the "Boy Scout Rule" - leave everywhere you visit cleaner than it was when you arrived. When you're fixing bugs; when you're reducing the product backlog, look at each area of code you touch, and reduce the debt as you go. Really if you're good at it that's all you need. If it is noticeable to any user it is probably a defect not debt. Debt is noticeable to people who have to maintain and improve the product.

Anything which is not user facing is a technical debt. Some of the technical debt's are 1. Updating SDK's in the codebase 2. Updating libraries supporting code 3. Supporting new versions of CI/CD tools 4. Supporting New operating systems or platforms 5. Code refactoring 6. Converting codebase to other programming language 7. Adding more Unit/Ui tests Based on the size of the technical debt, they can be added as Epics or Stories or Tasks and Subtasks

Begin by involving the development team in recognizing productivity hindrances or violations of best practices through regular code reviews. Monitor code complexity, duplications, and outdated dependencies. Assess the impact on future development, identifying code that impedes new features or hampers iteration speed. Address architectural debt, focusing on foundational issues affecting scalability and maintainability. Prioritize security-related debt to mitigate significant risks. Classify debt by type, such as design, testing, or documentation debt, and evaluate severity. Consistent evaluation and categorization empower organizations to proactively manage technical debt, prioritizing its resolution for a sustainable software ecosystem.

To prioritize technical debt in the Product Backlog, follow these steps: 1.Evaluate and group the debt into the following categories: o No-brainer:Tasks that are critical to keep the product running. o A worthy investment: Tasks that are worth doing because they contribute to a healthy product lifecycle. 2.Prioritize the debt by balancing quality vs. speed. When there is a need to prioritize speed over quality, the product owner and development team must come to an agreement on which tasks they’ll leave incomplete for the sake of delivering the product or feature on time. 3.Conduct a backlog refinement session for technical debt. Evaluate, group the debt into the categories mentioned above. Prioritize the debt by balancing quality vs speed.

Prioritizing technical debt in the Product Backlog involves identifying and classifying it based on its origin, severity, and impact. Common sources include legacy code, rushed decisions, evolving requirements, and new technologies. The classification of technical debt can be done in several ways, including relevance, visibility, urgency, and effort. Relevance pertains to the debt's connection to current or planned product features. This helps in determining whether resolving the debt will directly enhance the product's functionality. Visibility relates to the extent to which the debt is apparent to users or stakeholders, influencing user experience or satisfaction.

In my experience tech debt needs to be discussed with PO as well as the entire team - it’s not just a developer problem to solve. Tech debt slows your product development down, makes enhancements a bigger challenge, and balloons your OPEX. A strong PO looks at the big picture like an entrepreneur. It’s best to regularly review changes to epics in the current and upcoming PI plan as the solution matures. Leading up to reviews, work with your technical architects and functional leads to help translate the wish list into requirements which can be organized and prioritized into an executable roadmap. Prioritization can be done qualitatively using quadrants and effort sizing using a Fibonacci t-shirt scale for estimation.

During PI planning for the quarter, we allocated 20% of the team's velocity for tech debts for each sprint. And the remaining 80% will go to features and priority bugs. The value of specific technical improvements to the customer experience was communicated to the business, so it was easy to get their buy-in. We have an Epic with a clear identification of the technical tasks. To track the work, we create stories in the backlog and then plan by priority for each sprint in AzureDevOps.

Don't. Technical Debt should not be on the product backlog. Two main reasons for this - first it should not be directly visible, so any fixes shouldn't be visible either (if they are, it's "defect"). Second, the Product Owner can't really prioritize tech debt. They'd need to be a developer, wrangling with the code, to be able to assess value. Instead, have an understanding with the PO that the dev team will always spend a proportion of time beating down on tech debt. In areas where there's a lot, the PO needs to be alerted that the team will take longer to finish stuff, partly because of the drag it causes, partly because of the effort we'd put in to reduce debt. Normally the PO doesn't need to know because it's a constant overhead.

Assess the impact on features and user experience, prioritizing high-impact debt. Consider customer satisfaction and address issues affecting users. Factor in the cost of delay, resolving issues before they become more expensive. Enhance development efficiency by tackling workflow-impeding debt. Prioritize based on risks, especially security and compliance. Collaborate with the development team for insights and align priorities with the overall business strategy. Consider dependencies between debt items and address foundational issues first. Regularly reassess priorities based on evolving business needs and development team feedback for a balanced approach that maximizes short and long-term business value.

To effectively prioritize technical debt in the Product Backlog, it's essential to evaluate its impact on business value relative to the effort and urgency of resolution. A useful method is employing a matrix or quadrant, categorizing debt items along axes of value and effort. High value but low effort debts are prioritized. Tackling these yields quick, significant improvements in product quality and performance, offering immediate benefits with minimal resource investment. Next are high value, high effort items. Despite requiring more resources, they provide substantial long-term benefits and might need to be broken into smaller, manageable tasks.

I like to carve out 20% sprint points per sprint towards technical debt that way we're always addressing issues that need attention. This depends on the company, and it's culture of course. In some places that won't work, I've put together tech debt crashes before around the holidays where as things slow in the business we spend a sprint on technical debt to start the new year with a cleaner house.

In large enterprises and long-term projects, proper management of technical debt is essential. Regularly addressing and planning for technical debt in separate sprints, or across multiple tasks within sprints, is a strategic approach. Emphasising the importance of technical debt management is critical because projects often reach a point where it becomes difficult to extend functionality, improve performance or introduce new features without significant code changes. Each incremental improvement and the proactive management of technical debt opens doors to greater opportunities and future project success. The key is persistent communication, comprehensive tracking of technical debt and careful documentation of it.

Unless your team is particularly sloppy, most tech debt is not from decision to be bad, but from not recognizing we're accruing debt when we do something. We learn better later, and as that happens we learn to recognize ever more debt that has always been there, but undetected. Treat this as good news about today as much as bad news about yesterday.

Always reserve some bandwidth for Tech debt items.If the value it brings is directly not 'visible' to the users/business, then it is the responsibility of the team to make sure it is presented in such a way that is is evident that it adds value as part of their NFRs.

Don’t. Address Technical Debt as part of the continuous engineering of the product. You will never get permission to rank technical debt above business needs. Never negotiate engineering with non-engineers.