Engineering Lead
Written by
Tomás Ribeiro
Published
Reading time
5 min read
Category
Engineering
Debt is not always bad
Every product we ship carries some debt. Shortcuts taken to hit a launch date are often the right business call. The problem starts when nobody tracks them and the interest quietly eats every sprint.
Make the debt visible
We keep a short debt register next to the product backlog. Each item gets a plain-language description, the area of the code it touches and a rough cost in slowed-down work per month. Once leaders can see the cost, prioritising it gets much easier.
The 20 percent rule
We reserve about a fifth of every sprint for debt and platform work. Not a big rewrite every two years, but steady payments every two weeks. Features keep shipping and the codebase gets a little better each time.
Fix it where you touch it
The best time to clean up a module is when you are already changing it for a feature. We pair refactors with roadmap work, so the business sees value and the code improves where it matters most.
When a rewrite is right
Sometimes a part of the system is beyond saving. Even then we avoid the big bang. We rebuild it piece by piece behind the existing interface and switch traffic over gradually.