Joep Schuurkes (Posts about tech debt)https://smallsheds.garden/categories/tech-debt.atom2023-11-26T10:50:51ZJoep SchuurkesNikolaA backlog item is a backlog item is a backlog itemhttps://smallsheds.garden/blog/2023/a-backlog-item-is-a-backlog-item-is-a-backlog-item/2023-04-03T08:51:25+02:002023-04-03T08:51:25+02:00Joep Schuurkes<div><p>Originally Scrum was very much about <em>"You tell us what needs building. We'll decide how we build it and how soon we'll deliver."</em><sup id="fnref:1"><a class="footnote-ref" href="https://smallsheds.garden/blog/2023/a-backlog-item-is-a-backlog-item-is-a-backlog-item/#fn:1">1</a></sup> I've never seen that version of Scrum. The version I have seen, has a product manager try to get as many features into a sprint as reasonably possible - for varying degrees of reasonable. This comes at the expense of maintenance work, such as keeping libraries up-to-date or removing technical debt. And it incentivizes the team to cut corners on features, to not leave code in a better state than they found it, to not fix smaller bugs and instead log them somewhere for later.</p>
<p>One solution I see to this problem, is to put an engineering manager fully in charge of the team.<sup id="fnref:5"><a class="footnote-ref" href="https://smallsheds.garden/blog/2023/a-backlog-item-is-a-backlog-item-is-a-backlog-item/#fn:5">2</a></sup> The product manager prioritizes the features. The engineering manager prioritizes the full scope of work for the team. That's not a simple change to pull off, however.</p>
<p>Another solution might be to change the way we use our backlogs. If a product manager gets to prioritize all the work, and the tool they use is a backlog, then we should make sure that all the work<sup id="fnref:2"><a class="footnote-ref" href="https://smallsheds.garden/blog/2023/a-backlog-item-is-a-backlog-item-is-a-backlog-item/#fn:2">3</a></sup> is in the backlog: features, bugs, and technical debt. Let's take a look at each of these three categories of work.</p>
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