#engineering-management

Balance new features with technical debt reduction effectively. Technical debt assessment: 1. Code quality metrics: cyclomatic complexity, test coverage, duplication. 2. Performance impact: page load times, API response times. 3. Developer productivity: time to implement new features. 4. Bug frequency: hotfixes and customer-impacting issues. 5. Security vulnerabilities: outdated dependencies, known exploits. Debt categorization: 1. Critical: security issues, major performance problems (fix immediately). 2. Important: impacts developer velocity significantly (plan in next sprint). 3. Nice-to-have: code cleanliness, minor optimizations (backlog). Resource allocation: allocate 15-25% of development capacity to debt reduction. Stakeholder communication: explain debt in business terms (slower features, more bugs, security risk). Tools: SonarQube for code analysis, New Relic for performance monitoring. Prevent future debt: code reviews, architecture decisions documentation, regular refactoring.