Technical Debt Program/Management Process

Overview

The Technical Debt Management Process serves to address two distinct areas of technical debt - the backlog reduction approach and the decision making process for new technical debt accumulation.

Backlog Reduction

There have been and continue to be many discussion on how to address the Technical Debt backlog. Although the initial desire may be to reduce the technical debt backlog to zero, that may not be a reasonable or even desirable goal. As with most elements of work, not all technical debt is the same in scope or impact. As such, it's unlikely that one approach to reducing the backlog will fit all the different variations of accrued technical debt.

Accrual Decision Making Process

Closely related to backlog management is minimizing the accrual of new technical debt. The Accrual Decision Making Process aims to provide a decision making framework that supports accruing only intended technical debt that is purposeful and in the best interest of code base and it's community.