It’s Monday morning. Your inbox is already exploding. Slack notifications won’t stop. Your product manager pings you before your coffee’s even had a chance to cool:
“Hey, any chance we can squeeze this feature into the quarter? Super high priority. CEO is asking.”
You glance at your roadmap. Three large features are already planned. Tech debt work is completely deprioritised. The engineers on your team are frustrated - we have important tech debt to get to. Leadership is asking why things are taking so long.
And you already know how this plays out…
The Same Old Story
This happens in nearly every company. And it usually ends in one of two ways:
🟢 Product wins: New features get built and we keep piling up tech debt.
🔵 Engineering wins: Tech Debt gets reduced slightly, but the product manager feels like nothing is moving forward.
Neither is a good outcome.
I have seen:
Product work being prioritised when it has the potential to generate revenue (+$).
Engineering work being prioritised only after…