Playbook topic
Technical Debt Framework
Treat technical debt as a portfolio of constrained bets with explicit cost, risk and paydown strategy.
Not all debt is equal. Some debt funds learning. Some debt quietly taxes every future change.
A practical framework separates intentional debt, accidental debt and bit-rot, then ranks interventions by delivery risk and organisational cost.
Leaders should make debt visible in planning, not only in retrospectives after delivery has already slowed.