How to talk about Tech Debt work?
Some people say it is hard to convince product managers to work on tech debt.
Some people think PMs are guilty because they make bad decisions of skipping the tech debt work on the roadmaps.
In my opinion, it is engineering, who most often needs to improve.
We cannot sell tech debt work by saying “We want to refactor X”. Most often, it leads to nothing.
The path to learning how to sell tech debt work lies in product management. At the bare minimum, I would go for:
Output vs Outcome vs Impact by Jeff Patton to build a fundamental understanding of outcomes.
Outcome Based Roadmaps by Marty Cagan to put problems to solve and outcomes work on the roadmap.
Opportunity Solution Tree and Continious Interviewing by Teresa Torres to visualise and structurize outcomes, opportunities and bets of tech debt work.
Empowered Product Teams by Marty Cagan to see that engineering is one of the co-creators of the roadmap.
And then, it doesn’t matter if we work in roadmaps vs no-roadmaps, backlog vs no-backlog organisations. Doesn’t matter if we use the techniques mentioned above or not.
Learning from this “product management knowledge” shapes our thinking about defining the work-to-be-done and slicing the work. It teaches us how to speak the same language as product leaders do. This way we get better at explaining the “why” behind the tech work.
After some time the term “tech debt” may even disappear from the vocabulary, because this type of work will become equally important as the other types. “Tech debt” work will be described in the words that deliver value to personas.
It is also about the versatility of our skills, knowledge and experience, which can make us more valuable team members, who care about the users. It is also about understanding our colleagues of different specializations.
There are tons of Marty Cagan’s articles.
There is Engineering Wants to Rewrite! by Marty Cagan from 2007, which I do not fully agree with on the solution level but I agree with how it states the problem level.
From my perspective, it’s an engineering people’s job to learn the basics of product management, otherwise, our seniority may become a lie (2020).