From Technical Debt
to Product Investment

WORKSHOP

Learn how to discover, sell, and execute incremental technical investments that improve products and accelerate delivery

PROBLEM

If there’s one thing successful software development teams have in common, it’s technical debt. Technical debt is inevitable. Entropy affects all complex systems. From Atlassian’s recent study:

59% of developers lose critical time to technical debt

For a company with 500 developers, tech debt costs approximately $6.9 million annually in lost productivity

SOLUTION

Small, strategic investments can transform this challenge into opportunities: improving speed, reducing costs, increasing innovation, and boosting team morale. To realize these gains, you need to:

Build economic cases for debt reduction

Develop negotiation strategies to secure leadership buy-in

Acquire technical tools to bring order to chaotic systems

OUR WORKSHOP

In our From Technical Debt to Product Investment workshop, teams will learn how to discover, sell, and execute incremental technical investments that improve products.

Specifically, they will learn how to make an economic case for paying back debt, negotiate with their leaders, and build a technical toolbox to bring order to their systems' more chaotic corners.

HANDS-ON, REAL WORLD

This immersive and experiential workshop addresses a team’s real problems within their actual systems and practices in working code.

Learning Objectives

  Identify the conditions and root causes that lead to an unmanageable amount of technical debt

  Classify and tackle the most egregious issues holding a team back

  Build a business case for making technical investments

  Negotiate for roadmap and sprint capacity with leaders and product partners

  Balance throughput across new features and technical investments

  Employ innovative technical practices for large- and small-scale refactorings

  • The workshop is 10-12 hours including prep/customization, the workshop sessions themselves, and follow up.

    The workshop can be delivered:

    • Remotely: 4 sessions over 2-3 weeks

    • In-person: 1 full day Each cohort accommodates up to 20 people (2-3 teams).

  • There are a few types of groups that make for a good workshop.

    An entire team—engineers, technical leads, product managers/owners, testers, and enablement roles.

    Or a group of senior engineers—influential technologists, staff+ engineers, people that will take new techniques and pollinate them throughout their organization.

    Immediate management is also encouraged to join to support investment prioritization.

  • Yes. In addition to soft skills around technical debt, we spend significant time developing tools for architecture- and design-level changes and daily practices such as continuous refactoring.

    • A Miro board and slide presentation with content developed during the workshop

    • A tailored playbook for addressing technical debt

    • A prioritized backlog of actionable technical investments aligned with strategic goals

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS