Slides from my May 2018 ProductCamp Boston conference session on tech debt and how product managers can navigate it successfully.

1. Don’t LetTech
Debt SinkYour
Roadmap!
Beth Linker
ProductCamp Boston
May 12, 2018

2. Beth Linker
* Sr. Dir. of Prod Mgmt @ Acquia (we’re hiring!)
* Former software engineer/architect

3. Who IsThisTalk For?
× Product managers working on complex
software products
× Product managers who want to better
understand their technical teams’
challenges
× Product managers who feel a sense of
despair when they ask their technical
teams for estimates

4. Tech Debt Defined
× Previous technical decisions (or non-
decisions) that are no longer working for
you
× //TODO: Clean this up later!!!

5. Symptoms ofTech Debt
× Time to roll out new releases goes up
× Changes break in production because they’re
harder to test
× Onboarding new engineers takes a really long
time
× Experienced engineers are frustrated and
unhappy
× New features seem impossible

6. Origins ofTech Debt
× Sometimes you
take on tech debt
in order to hit a
critical business
target
× Most of the time
it’s not that
calculated
Source: https://martinfowler.com/bliki/TechnicalDebtQuadrant.html

7. Everybody’s GotTech Debt
× Commercial success
leaves tech debt in its
wake
× Fast growth
× Demanding customers
× Nobody gets to the
Magic Quadrant
without tech debt
Tech Debt
Tech Debt
Tech Debt
Tech Debt

8. How Engineers Feel AboutTech Debt
× “It still works, but I don’t
know why”
× ”We need to fix this”
× “It’s so ugly!”
× ”Give us some time to get
this right"

9. How The Business
Thinks About Tech
Debt

10. Product Management is uniquely
positioned to navigate through this
mess

11. Three Easy WaysTo Fail
Your Approach How It Goes Horribly Wrong
• “We need to keep building
features, we don’t have time to
fix that stuff”
• Trust breaks down
• Nothing gets shipped
• “The engineers say we need to
take a year to fix the old stuff”
• The business gets impatient
halfway through
• “We’ll be able to do really great
things after we get to this new
architecture, just bear with us
for a year”
• Customers get impatient
• The market moves on and
you’re building an outdated
solution

12. WhatTo Do Instead
× “Project Portfolio” approach
× Diversification is your friend
× QuickWins
× Big Bets
× Low+Slow Projects

13. Quick Wins
× Top customer problems
× Velocity accelerators
× Customer success pain points
× Almost-finished projects that
need a little more work

14. Big Bets
× What are the key things that would radically
improve your customers’ experience?
× What changes need to happen to make those
things possible?
× How are you going to get your current
customers there?
× How can you break it down so it’s actionable
and show progress every quarter?

15. Low+Slow Projects
× These take patience but can give you a great
payoff when you finish them
× Put a small team on something and don’t
interrupt them OR
× Have a larger team reserve a few story points
per sprint to chip away at a well-defined goal
× Do a low-key rollout and demonstrate some
results

16. Putting It AllTogether
× Use your roadmap to sell the whole portfolio
to your stakeholders:
× Quick wins build confidence and buy you
more time for the big bets
× Big bets justify the investment and motivate
the teams
× Low and slow projects get important things
done without a lot of fuss

17. Three KeyTake-Aways
× Tech debt challenges are really hard and
also really common - you’re not alone!
× Empathize with your engineers, your
customers, and your business
stakeholders
× Use a project portfolio to balance
competing needs and get everyone
aligned to move forward

18. Thanks for listening!
Any questions?
You can find me at
@blinker
blinker@gmail.com