Topic: Technical Debt

Technical Debt Classification: Internal Insight, Not Board Governance

Technical Debt Classification: Internal Insight, Not Board Governance

When Categorising Debt Helps—and When It's Overhead

Technical debt classification helps Product & Engineering teams understand debt composition—but don't expect board engagement on categories. Tag debt-related Key Results by type (deliberate vs accidental, business-blocking vs aesthetic) when debt is a significant problem requiring structured remediation.

Technical Debt Classification: Internal Insight, Not Board Governance
Keeping The Lights On in Product Roadmaps

Keeping The Lights On in Product Roadmaps

Stop pretending that 100% of your P&E team is doing feature development

Every engineering team must spend time on KTLO work—bug fixes, security patches, compliance updates, and technical debt. Yet many roadmaps assume 100% feature development. Here's why that's unrealistic and how to plan honestly.

Keeping The Lights On in Product Roadmaps
Firebreak Sprints: When Your Entire Engineering Team Needs to Stop and Fix the Foundation

Firebreak Sprints: When Your Entire Engineering Team Needs to Stop and Fix the Foundation

SonarQube just flagged 347 critical security vulnerabilities. Your DORA metrics are in the red. A threading bug is crashing microservices across the platform. Sometimes the whole team needs to stop feature work and fix the foundation. Learn how firebreak sprints work, when to call one, and how to insert them into your roadmap without destroying delivery commitments or losing stakeholder trust.

Firebreak Sprints: When Your Entire Engineering Team Needs to Stop and Fix the Foundation