You're facing a backlog of technical debt. How do you decide when to prioritize it over new product features?
Deciding between addressing technical debt and adding new features can be daunting. To strike the right balance:
- Assess the risk: Understand how the debt impacts current operations and growth potential.
- Evaluate customer impact: Prioritize debt resolution if it significantly improves user experience or system reliability.
- Align with business goals: Weigh tech debt fixes against strategic objectives to ensure alignment.
How do you balance technical maintenance with innovation? Share your strategies.
You're facing a backlog of technical debt. How do you decide when to prioritize it over new product features?
Deciding between addressing technical debt and adding new features can be daunting. To strike the right balance:
- Assess the risk: Understand how the debt impacts current operations and growth potential.
- Evaluate customer impact: Prioritize debt resolution if it significantly improves user experience or system reliability.
- Align with business goals: Weigh tech debt fixes against strategic objectives to ensure alignment.
How do you balance technical maintenance with innovation? Share your strategies.
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When prioritizing technical debt over new features, focus on risk, customer impact, and business goals. Address debt that affects performance or user experience, and ensure your decisions align with long-term strategic objectives.
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From my personal experience balancing the prioritisation criteria accordingly is an effective means. Including cost of delay in the prioritisation next to business value or consider cost of delay as part of the business value can help to have a more hollistic prioritisation approach that not only considers new features as valuable, but also technical debt or other topics.
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