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Build · Core

Balance new features with technical health

Shortcuts in code, known as technical debt, slow the team down over time. A good PM makes room for fixing them, so the team can keep delivering at speed.

About 2-4 hoursEvergreenLast reviewed 5 November 2026

Who this applies to

Skills it builds
Technical and AI fluencyPrioritisation and roadmapping
PM types
All
Product types
All
Starting points
All
Ways of working
All
Experience
Intermediate (1 to 4 years)Experienced (5+ years)
Size of organisation
All

Steps, by experience

Beginner (under 1 year)

  1. Ask the engineers which parts of the system slow them down or break most often.
  2. Ask what each problem costs: slower delivery, more bugs, outages or security risk.
  3. Agree a regular share of capacity for technical health, often 15 to 25 percent.
  4. Put technical health items in the same backlog and prioritise them openly.
  5. Explain the business value of this work to stakeholders in plain terms.

Intermediate (1 to 4 years)

  1. Build a list of technical debt with the team, sorted by cost and risk.
  2. Agree a standing share of capacity and track it.
  3. Prioritise debt alongside features using the same criteria.
  4. Report the benefit in delivery speed and reliability.

Experienced (5+ years)

  1. Separate deliberate, sensible debt from reckless debt, and set rules for each.
  2. Tie technical health to measures such as lead time, failed changes and incidents.
  3. Fund larger platform or architecture work through the roadmap, not just spare capacity.
  4. Make technical health a shared goal for product and engineering leaders.

Who can do this

Owner: Product manager

Can be delegated to

  • Tech Lead or Architect: List the debt and estimate its cost and risk
  • DevOps / SRE: Supply data on incidents and failed releases

Reviewed by: Tech Lead, Architect

Tool examples

Jira
Label technical health items and track the share of each sprint spent on them.
GitHub
Use code scanning and dependency alerts to spot health risks.
GitLab
Use code quality reports to show where health is getting worse.

Definition of done

  • Technical debt list agreed with the team
  • Capacity share agreed and tracked
  • Value explained to stakeholders

Common pitfalls

  • Treating all technical work as optional
  • Hiding technical work from stakeholders
  • Big rewrites with no plan to deliver value along the way

If you lead the team

What good looks like: Teams make steady room for fixing technical debt, and can explain the trade-off.

Ask your PM

  • How much time do we spend on technical health, and is it enough?
  • What's slowing the team down most?

Warning signs

  • Technical debt is only discussed in a crisis.
  • Delivery is getting slower each quarter.

Do these first

Sources