How can product managers help to reduce technical debt?

Product managers have extensive knowledge of access to different departments and stakeholders of the company. This puts them in an ideal position to create a culture around prevention and coping with technical debt. We provide some valuable strategies.

According to Gartner's 2019 Product Manager survey, only 55% of the product launches occurred as scheduled. This is significant for product managers who release on time as they are more likely to reach their internal goals within a year of release. On average, of 45% of delayed releases, 20% missed their internal targets.

Failure to release a product within the planned time frame can be attributed to many factors, including the lack of a formal release process, delays in product development (errors, failures, function spread), failure to meet customer requirements, product quality, and even supply issues. Another reason is the technical debt. Technical debt frustrates developers and a range of issues, and unpatched errors mean customers are dissatisfied. Customers leave negative product reviews that challenge the marketing team. The unstable architecture delays the release of the new features. The sales cycle is affected. Senior management and investors will question this.

Product managers play a crucial role in promoting product success, vision, features, strategy, product release, market positioning, competitors, and a road-map. Product managers are located at a crossroads of engineering, sales, support, and marketing, meaning that they are uniquely positioned to address technical debt problems. Here are some viable strategies that will help.

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Establish alliance

The Product Manager's responsibilities should include establishing a solid relationship with technical executives, CTO, and other department directors. Gartner's survey found that 78% of product managers saw improving internal collaboration as one of their top three significant tasks, with a low product failure rate. Take time to talk with the technical leader to understand the extent of its internal technical debt and promise to solve it. Are any advocates in the development team (not necessarily management) willing to handle technical debt? Avoid making people feel that technical debt is to blame. Instead, focus on the positive sense of debt solving for your product, company and customers. Management is encouraged to provide incentives to reduce technical debt, such as a day off or recreational activities.

Make technology debt public and transparent

Technology debt is everywhere and should be part of every product meeting. Make it an actionable project, and seek regular updates. To avoid looking just like a gatekeeper, try to involve developers in problem-solving and set priorities for the work of solving technology debt. To be clear, do the Developers prefer to sprint or spend particular time to solve technical debt? Which person is responsible for which job? What is the current workload for everyone? Do you need more employees?

Ask the necessary questions

The product manager's job is a battle that constantly shifts the context between the task and the timeline. Product managers are probably the best people in the entire organization and have an excellent eye for every aspect of a project. Solving technical debt means strategy and commitment, but the first thing is to determine the reality of the problem. Take a code, for example, error, which delays product release. Ideally, organizations track and monitor technology debt and provide a progressive list of action projects. If this is not the case, asking open questions gives you a realistic and clear understanding of the severity, the potential consequences, and a dialogue on the outlook. Play a game, and anyone who answers "as appropriate" needs to put a dollar in the jar. Examples of the inquiries are as follows.

• Is there a strategic reason to delay the solution (for example, waiting for a technical upgrade of the particular software used)?
• Is there any technical debt (such as outdated product supply) without repair?
• How much work does it take to fix this code?
• Can we promise to fix this code later?
• Who will be responsible for any repair, and what is the schedule?
• Does this schedule conflict with other release plans, feature updates, etc.?
• What is the impact of not fixing this code on current customers and future versions?
• What needs to be done before committing to future rework or remodelling?

Put the remediation of technical debt in the road-map

We are embedding technology debt into a road-map schedule. Assign tasks and time to perform Bug fixes, code review, maintenance, and comprehensively reduce existing debt to build more powerful, more resilient products.

Make the road-map as open and visible as possible, so the development team and other colleagues feel they're part of the product cycle. The road-map should be flexible, but it should also include some hard deadlines for dealing with technical debt.

Remember, not everything needs to be re-factoring. Your goal is to determine the intersection of what you have to do in this Sprint, a month or quarter, and the portion of your code base with technical debt. To solve the technical debt at these intersection points, not outside the intersection.

Reference to the technical debt development of the KPI

Eliminate technical debt as a way to track success within your organization. Create a KPI around the specific reference technology debt's product performance and development speed. If your company uses net recommendations (NPS, reflecting word of mouth) to measure customer loyalty, this may include feedback on product repair delays, vulnerabilities, etc. Sometimes getting feedback directly from the end user does realize the problem.

Consider how to prevent technical debt

Discuss what strategy can be incorporated into the project process to reduce technical debt with the technical leader. This may include coaching, team training, and pairing programming to understand if these can be included in the production budget. Find out the skill gap that puts the responsibility of repair code on one.

Take your documents carefully

Some development teams strive to create a culture of opportunistic reconstructions where code repair —— occurs whenever the code needs to be cleaned up. While this sounds ideal, it is not realistic at the peak of a heavy workload. Ensure that your company records the debt and cleans up the debt for its liability. This should be a "living" document often mentioned and implemented. This is particularly important in organizations where team members have changed.