How to Balance New Work with Tech Debt
How to Balance New Work with Tech Debt
Introduction: The Eternal Tug-of-War
Every engineering team faces the same challenge: balancing the push for new features with the need to maintain and improve the existing codebase. On one side, there’s pressure from stakeholders, product managers, and customers to deliver new value quickly. On the other, there’s the quiet but growing weight of tech debt — that imperfect code, outdated architecture, or missing test coverage that slows you down over time.
How do you ship quickly without turning your codebase into a house of cards? The answer isn’t sexy, but it is strategic: you need a framework for deciding when to prioritize debt paydown and when to focus on new features.
1. Recognize That Tech Debt Is Not “Bad Code”
Tech debt isn’t inherently evil — in fact, it’s often a strategic choice. Early in a project, you may consciously cut corners to validate a business idea faster. The danger comes when that short-term decision becomes permanent and starts slowing down your ability to deliver.
Key takeaway: Treat tech debt like financial debt — track it, plan for it, and pay it down before it accrues too much interest.
2. Build Tech Debt Into the Roadmap
One of the biggest mistakes teams make is treating tech debt as an “extra” task that gets done when there’s time (spoiler: there’s never time).
Instead:
- Allocate a percentage of every sprint or cycle for maintenance and refactoring.
- Tag tech debt tickets in your backlog so you can measure how much is accumulating.
- Prioritize debt paydown that directly unblocks new feature development or reduces future risk.
3. Tie Debt Paydown to Business Goals
Leadership is much more likely to support debt work when it’s clearly connected to outcomes like:
- Faster time to market
- Reduced bugs and incidents
- Lower onboarding costs for new developers
When you can say, “Fixing this will let us build future features 20% faster,” you turn debt work from a cost into an investment.
4. Avoid “Refactor Everything” Syndrome
Engineers love elegant solutions — but a full rewrite can be the most dangerous kind of debt paydown. It’s expensive, slow, and risky.
A better approach:
- Refactor incrementally.
- Improve code as you touch it (“Boy Scout Rule”).
- Only rewrite when the old system is truly holding you back and you have a clear migration plan.
5. Keep Stakeholders in the Loop
Transparency is key. Show product managers and executives:
- How tech debt is slowing velocity (metrics like story throughput, build times, bug counts).
- What you’re doing to address it.
- The payoff once improvements land.
When they see the impact, they’ll be more likely to support ongoing investment.
Conclusion: Balance Is a Process, Not a Destination
You’ll never eliminate tech debt entirely — and that’s not the goal. The goal is to manage it deliberately, keeping your team productive and your product healthy.
Think of it as a continuous cycle: deliver value, monitor for friction, invest in improvements, and repeat. Teams that master this cycle can ship faster and with higher quality — no heroics required.