Technical debt often lurks in the background of software projects, silently accumulating as shortcuts are taken to meet tight deadlines or pivot quickly. For new engineering managers, handling tech debt is a delicate balancing act: neglect it, and your codebase deteriorates; obsess over it, and you risk slowing momentum and frustrating stakeholders.

Rather than viewing technical debt as a roadblock, savvy leaders approach it as a strategic investment that requires clear prioritization, transparency, and collaboration with both technical and non-technical partners.

Recognizing the Real Costs of Technical Debt

Before diving into management tactics, its important to understand what technical debt actually costs your team and business. Beyond the obvious bugs or system failures, debt can manifest as slower development cycles, increased onboarding challenges, and diminished developer morale.

Studies show that unresolved technical debt can slow development velocity by as much as 30% over time, as engineers wrestle with fragile code and convoluted dependencies. This hidden drag affects time-to-market and the ability to respond to customer needs promptly.

Prioritizing Tech Debt with an Impact-Driven Lens

One common pitfall is treating all tech debt equally or letting it pile up without clear guidance. Instead, managers should prioritize debt by considering:

• Customer impact: Does the debt affect user experience, causing bugs or slowdowns?
• Developer experience: Are engineers slowed or frustrated by the debt during feature work?
• Business risk: Could the debt threaten security, compliance, or system availability?

Mapping these dimensions onto a simple scoring system or visual radar helps communicate severity and urgency in a way that resonates across teams.

Creating a Transparent Tech Debt Ledger

To manage technical debt systematically, consider building a debt ledger a living document or tool where debt items are recorded, described, and scored.

This ledger should include:

• Debt description: What is the issue, and how does it affect the system?
• Origin: When and why was this debt introduced?
• Estimated impact: Effort required to fix, risk level, and business impact.
• Owner or champion: Who is responsible for addressing or monitoring it?
• Status and priority: Is it scheduled to be addressed soon, deferred, or accepted as ongoing risk?

Sharing this ledger transparently with stakeholders educates non-technical leaders about the cumulative risks and fosters a culture of continuous improvement.

Making Tech Debt Visible to Non-Technical Stakeholders

One of the biggest struggles tech managers face is translating technical problems into business language that executives and product managers can understand.

Here are a few approaches to bridge that gap:

• Use metaphors and analogies: Explain tech debt as financial debt manageable in small amounts, but dangerous if left to accumulate unchecked.
• Frame in terms of risk and cost: Highlight how ignoring debt risks outages, lost customers, or expensive firefighting later.
• Connect with roadmaps: Show how maintenance efforts align with long-term goals like scalability or faster feature delivery.
• Quantify impact: Provide estimated time savings or risk reduction metrics if certain debt is resolved.

These tactics help garner support for necessary refactoring or architectural work that often gets sidelined.

Deciding When to Ship Dirty and When to Pay Down Debt

Its rarely feasible to maintain a pristine codebase. Sometimes shipping quickly with known issues is the right call, especially to seize market opportunities. However, managers must deliberately decide when this trade-off is acceptable.

Consider these questions:

• Is this temporary technical compromise guarded by a plan to fix soon?
• Does this decision expose critical systems or data to risk?
• Can quality assurance detect and prevent major regressions?

Regularly review such decisions in team retrospectives or leadership meetings to prevent debt from spiraling out of control.

Empowering Your Team to Take Ownership

Culture plays a big role in how technical debt is addressed. New managers should encourage developers to raise concerns early and propose solutions without fear of blame.

• Integrate tech debt discussions into sprint planning and retrospectives.
• Celebrate wins when debt is paid down or new standards established.
• Encourage pairing or mob programming on complex refactors to spread knowledge.
• Provide time allotments in each sprint for maintenance work.

This approach builds a proactive mindset where addressing debt becomes part of the teams rhythm instead of a dreaded chore.

Balancing Constraints Without Becoming the ‘No’ Manager

Managers often fear becoming the no person when they insist on quality or caution. To avoid this label while still defending code health:

• Build trust through transparency: Clearly explain the rationale behind prioritizing debt or delaying features.
• Offer alternatives: Present trade-offs rather than just blocking requests.
• Advocate for capacity: Work with product and leadership to secure dedicated time for maintenance.
• Collaborate, dont control: Empower tech leads to help weigh risk versus reward.

This way, technical debt stewardship becomes a shared responsibility rather than a unilateral veto.

Tools That Help Track and Communicate Tech Debt

While the tech debt ledger can be a simple spreadsheet, some tools enhance visibility and workflow:

• Jira or similar issue trackers: Specialized tags and dashboards to monitor debt-related tickets.
• Notion or Confluence: Documentation spaces to describe debt context and remediation plans.
• Code Quality Tools: Static analysis and coverage metrics that highlight erosion areas automatically.

Integrating these into your engineering process helps keep debt management top of mind.

Ultimately, managing technical debt is as much about leadership and communication as it is about the code. By framing debt as a visible, prioritized, and shared challenge, managers can maintain delivery velocity and team morale all without becoming the dreaded “no” voice in the room.