What is Technical Debt in Scrum?

Technical debt in Scrum is the implied cost of future rework, meaning extra work the team will need to do later because of the quick solutions they made during product development to deliver the product faster, which leads to lower-quality products. Technical debt in Scrum will occur because the business may pressure them to complete the product quickly within one sprint. The developers may take shortcuts to complete the product, like writing messy code, without analysing it properly, due to the limited time, leading to product bugs they need to cope with in the future.

However, these shortcuts can help achieve short-term sprint goals, which can gradually affect code quality, developer productivity, and the team's ability to develop product features efficiently. Technical debt is not only a technical issue, but it can also affect the development team, scrum master, product owner, business value, and overall product quality. 

They may create technical debt if they do not address it properly in future sprints. When it is managed properly, they create a balance between delivering features quickly, improving the quality of the product, and building software. The Scrum master plays an important role in managing technical debt by helping the team balance fast delivery with long-term product quality, discussing quality concerns, and identifying the impediments that block the team's productivity.

This blog explores what technical debt is, how to manage it, and who is responsible for dealing with the debt. You will also get to learn about the types and common causes, how to identify effectively, how it impacts development, and why the comparison matters between technical debt and financial debt.

Definition of Technical Debt

Technical debt is a concept in Agile software development where the developers choose to finish the product quickly to achieve a speedy release instead of choosing a better approach that takes longer. This happens when the development team is under pressure because of tight deadlines or prioritises quick solutions; they might skip the best solutions, which can lead to low-quality products and errors that affect the team in future work. 

The longer they wait to address it, the more expensive and effort it costs. It’s like financial debt: the longer you ignore the payment, the more interest you have to pay in the future. So, addressing and managing the technical debt sooner will reduce the risk of these issues.

How to Define and Manage Technical Debt?

This section explains how a Scrum team recognises and manages technical debt in Scrum before it becomes a huge task.

Defining Technical Debt

Defining technical debt means identifying the parts of software that need improvement because of the shortcuts developers choose during the development of the agile product.

1. Identify Categories: 

• Code debt occurs when code is not easy to understand because developers duplicate and paste the same logic multiple times, which can lead to functional defects, bugs, and slower future development.
• Design debt happens when the overall structure is weak, for example, when the two parts of the application are connected too tightly. When developers want to change one part, it accidentally affects another part of the application. Design debt will happen due to these architectural shortcuts and tight coupling.
• Documentation debt occurs when the documents are missing or outdated. New developers don’t understand how the system works, and current existing developers waste time searching for missing information.
• Infrastructure debt refers to outdated technical tools and the software system. When a developer uses an unpatched system that no longer receives security updates, that can lead to technical and security risks.

2. Create clear criteria

• The developer team can create clear criteria to recognise whether something is technical debt. Code complexity metrics like cyclomatic complexity help to measure how many different paths or decisions exist in a code. For example, code with cyclomatic metrics above 10% is considered too complicated, which makes it harder to test.
• Test coverage thresholds show how much of the code is covered by automation tests. A team may decide that test coverage below 80%  needs attention.
• Dependency age refers to how old the software packages and the libraries used in the application are. The team decides whether software packages that are not updated for more than 2 years should still be supported for product development or not.
• Security vulnerability scores measure how serious the security gaps are. These scores help the team understand which security issues need emergency attention. Teams can use these scores to prioritise the issues and fix the most serious risks first. 

Managing Technical Debt

Managing technical debt in Scrum means deciding what should be fixed first, making it visible, and regularly minimising it.

1. Make it visible

• First, the team should create a technical debt backlog where the issues will be registered, and they have to make the technical debt visible to prioritise the issues and fix them.
• They can also tag debt-related tasks in tools such as Jira and other issue trackers.
• Add debt markers in code: // TODO - Tech debt refactor; this can help developers identify the areas that need improvement in the future.
• Use tools like SonarQube to identify duplicated code and code-related issues.

2. Measure and prioritise

• Impact - How much are the issues slowing down the development?
• Probability - How likely are they to cause issues and failures?
• Cost - How much effort and cost will it take to fix?
• Risk - A small issue that creates a major security risk is more important than a large issue that has less impact on security, maintenance, and performance

3. Establish Processes

• Debt budget: reserving the fixed part of sprint capacity, which allocates 15-20% of sprint capacity
• Boy Scout Rule: developers should leave the code improved better than they found it
• Debt Sprints: most of the sprint focuses on debt reduction
• Quality Gates are rules that prevent low-quality code from entering 

4. Track and Monitor

• Debt ratio = ( Cost to fix debt / Current system value ) * 100. Here, a lower debt ratio means the product is easier to maintain
• Data Velocity = New debt added - Debt resolved per sprint. Here, if more debt is added than removed, then the team has to change its approach

5. Communication Strategy

• Teams should regularly communicate technical debt in Scrum with stakeholders
• They can make impacts clearer by visualising the technical debts on delivery speed
• Track and report the technical debt that they resolved during the sprint
• Understanding shortcuts may save time in the current sprint but may later create more work. So, educating the team on the higher cost of shortcuts is a good move

Technical Debt & Scrum — The Scrum Guide

The Scrum Guide doesn’t clearly mention technical debt. However, the Scrum framework empowers teams to manage technical debt in Scrum through several practical mechanisms :

• Product Backlog Integration

The product manager is responsible for maximising the value of the work, and it will be done by ordering the product backlog items, making it visible to every developer team, and prioritising the backlog items according to customer feedback. 

• Definition of Done

Definition of done is the requirements that have to be met to ensure high quality before its status is shown as complete. It ensures that newly built features don’t introduce future technical debt in Scrum. 

• Sprint Planning

During  sprint planning, the development team chooses the product backlog items according to their capacity to complete the work and reduce the technical debt.

• Sprint Retrospective

A sprint retrospective is an event in Scrum. In this event, an inspection will be done to check why the technical debt was created in the first place and adapt processes such as improving tooling and automated testing to avoid it in future sprints.

 Who is responsible for managing the Technical Debt in Scrum?

In Scrum, managing technical debt in Scrum is a shared responsibility across the whole Scrum team. Everyone contributes their roles differently. Here we are discussing which roles are responsible for managing the technical debt : 

• Developers

Developers are responsible for tracking, identifying, and reducing the technical debt in Scrum. During the development process, they recognise the issues and try to improve the code quality and refactor.

• Product Owner

The product owner is responsible for managing the product backlog items to reduce technical debt in Scrum according to their business value and higher product quality, which lasts for a long time.

• Scrum Master

Scrum master is responsible for facilitating the team to manage technical debt in Scrum effectively by letting the team discuss issues and address them during sprint planning and retrospectives to ensure the team understands the impacts of technical debt on productivity.

How does technical debt build up over the release cycle?

Technical debt in Scrum does not build up at once. When developers avoid the best working solutions and want to complete the product quickly to meet deadlines, they delay maintenance and improvement work. If these issues are not addressed early, they continue to grow and affect future development, and will become too complicated to fix because of all the bugs during the initial process

Early Cycle ( Sprint Beginnings ) : 

• Feature over foundation

During the early stages of the development process, the development team focuses on delivering a minimum viable product ( MVP) and completing sprint goals within the limited time they have been provided. To meet deadlines, developers may skip the testing and documentation phase and prioritise feature development over code quality.

• Quick Resolution

Developers focus on temporary solutions, which are called quick solutions. This may lead to a temporary fix but avoids the improvements that need to be made, with the intention of fixing them later. However, as new features are entered into the product backlog, they completely postpone these improvements to later, which results in technical debt.

Mid Cycle ( Integration Phase ) : 

• Whack - A - Mole - Bugs

As more features are added to the product backlog, technical debt will be more noticeable, and it will lead to regression. When a developer tries to fix one software bug, it causes another bug to pop up, so it is like a loop that never ends.

• Shifting Priorities

Organisations prioritise new feature development over code improvement. As a result, activities such as code improvements, automation testing, and updating will be delayed. This causes different types of technical debt, including design debt, code debt, and test debt.

Late Cycle (Post-Release) : 

• Interest Payments

By the time the product reaches production, technical debt costs the developers more, which is referred to as interest. They have to spend more time and effort on code improvement, bugs, and maintenance of the product.

• Compounding Friction

As the technical debt in Scrum keeps growing, the software becomes more fragile, making it difficult to improve the code because changes in one piece of code cause unexpected bugs. The product release cycle becomes longer, and maintenance costs will increase; developing new features becomes more difficult, and without regular efforts to reduce the technical debt, each feature requires more development time.

Check Out: SAFe® Product Owner/Product Manager Certification

How Can Scrum Masters Reduce Technical Debt?

When technical debt in Scrum is avoided, it can impede productivity, innovation, and quality. Addressing technical debt early improves product quality, productivity, and continues delivering value without slowing future development.

1. Regular Code Reviews

Regular code reviews help developers understand code duplication, poor design, and bugs. Reviewing code also helps team members share knowledge among themselves and helps maintain consistent code quality throughout the project.

2. Enhanced Code Reviews

Large language models help assist developers during code reviews by identifying code duplication, code improvements, or any potential bugs, which makes this reviewing phase faster.

3. Automated Documentation

Keeping documents up to date is essential for maintaining software quality. AI tools can help generate code comments and explanations, ensuring the code base is easy to understand. Well-maintained documentation reduces documentation debt.

4. Prioritise Refactoring

Refactoring is the process of structuring the code properly to meet clean code, maintainability, and ease of understanding. Regular refactoring prevents technical debt in Scrum.

5. Automated Testing

Automated testing detects issues in the software quickly and makes sure that the new features don’t affect the current functionality. Detecting the issues early will save developers more time and effort they have to put into the process in future development processes, and also reduce the extra cost to fix the software.

6. Predictive Analysis

Machine learning models check and analyse the historical data of a project, such as code changes and bugs; based on these, the model can predict the areas of potential technical debt in the future. This model helps Scrum teams to prioritise maintenance and fix those defects before the technical debt in Scrum becomes more difficult to handle.

7. Incremental Improvements

Instead of waiting for technical debt in Scrum to pile up, teams should focus on improving code quality and product quality during every sprint. Fixing small, minor issues will prevent massive-scale development in the future.

8. Collaborative Culture

Managing technical debt in Scrum is a shared responsibility among the Scrum team. Encouraging open communication during the sprint planning about backlog refinement and strategies for managing the technical debt.

Check Out: DevOps Foundation Certification Training 

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What are the types of technical debt?

1. Code Debt

Code debt is the most visible type of debt, as code bugs keep increasing, and it slows down the development process. Code debt happens when the team doesn’t check code properly, avoiding fixing bugs for later and duplicating code.

2. Architecture Debt

Architecture debt is the foundation of the application and is the most expensive technical debt to fix, as it requires massive structures and tightly coupled components that are difficult to scale. Architecture debt happens when the system has a poor design to deliver software quickly.

3. Documentation Debt

Documentation debt happens when the documents are outdated or missing information, including API documentation and architecture decisions. It makes new developers confused and hard to understand, and they rely on the knowledge of a few experienced developers.

4. Testing & Tooling Debt

Testing and tooling debt happens when the automated tests are skipped, manual tests are done by developers, or unstable tools are missing, and because of developers' lack of confidence that the changes will work properly.

5. Infrastructure & DevOps Debt

Infrastructure and DevOps debt occurs when there are inefficient deployment and operational practices, including manually configured servers, outdated deployment pipelines, and a lack of infrastructure code. These practices increase deployment errors and reduce automation.

6. Dependency & Security debt

Dependency and security debt happen when a team uses unsupported packages and delayed security updates. Using this old software will cause security risks and make it harder to maintain.

7. Process Debt

Process debt doesn’t affect software directly but slows down the development process. This debt will happen when there is poor communication between the team, delayed feedback, unclear sprint planning, and a poorly prioritised product backlog, which reduces team productivity.

What are the common causes of technical debt?

• Tight deadlines and time pressures: Rushing to meet customer expectations, developers may go with quick solutions or skip documentation and testing.
• Skill Gaps: Developers may lack the knowledge or experience needed to implement the best solution.
• Changing Requirements: Frequently changing requirements throughout the project development leave behind unused or incompatible code.
• Inadequate testing: Teams fail to create automated testing or rely on manual testing; defects are more likely to remain undetected.
• Lack of Documentation: Missing or incomplete documentation of architecture design makes onboarding, refactoring, and debugging more difficult in future maintenance.

Check Out: CSPO Certification Training 

How to identify technical debt?

Identifying technical debt in Scrum needs continuous code quality evaluation, maintainability, and performance tracking to avoid the occurrence of large problems later.

Several indicators can help the team identify technical debt. The team requires more time to spend on new features during the development process, instead of the slow development process. High defects, especially when bugs appear in the same module.

Lack of automated testing: when the test coverage is low, developers will hesitate to check the entire code because they are not confident that the changes will introduce new bugs; long onboarding times; new developers take so long to understand the system and architecture; outdated dependencies; unsupported libraries can result in security issues.

What are the examples of technical debt?

Some common examples of technical debt in Scrum include:

Code and Architecture Debt

• Hard-Coded Values

Developers place fixed values directly into the code. For example, setting a maximum file upload size limit to 5mb directly into the code means that the developers must modify the value whenever the limit needs to be changed.

• Spaghetti Code

A monolithic application combines many components into a single tightly connected system, which makes changing one feature unintentionally affect the other parts of the system.

• Outdated Libraries

Third-party libraries or using old software that is no longer maintained may contain security vulnerabilities.

Testing and Quality Debt

• Low Test Coverage

To meet tight deadlines, the team may skip automated testing or integration, which results in bugs remaining undetected.

• Accumulated Bug Debt

The minor bugs the team is continuously postponing. Over time, this growing backlog negatively impacts user experience and software quality.

Infrastructure and operational Debt

• Manual Deployments

Depending on the manual testing process instead of a continuous integration/deployment process.

• Neglected Updates

Ignoring software bugs and security updates with the mindset of doing it later, which affects performance and increases security risks

Process and Knowledge Debt

• Inadequate documentation

API specifications, missing or outdated documents, lead to increased onboarding time for new developers.

• Orphaned Feature Flags

Feature flags are temporary switches that allow teams to enable or disable particular features during testing. After the test ends, failing to remove these temporary code features clutters the codebase and increases code complexity.

What are the best practices for reducing technical debt?

We can reduce technical debt in Scrum by making technical debt visible, using automated tools, prioritising improvements, and documenting important decisions

1. Make Technical Debt Visible

Technical debt should be visible to the whole team, both business and stakeholders. Scrum team can monitor the product backlog using tools like Jira and Miro. This will help the developers, stakeholders, and Scrum master understand how it is affecting the development process.

2. Leverage Automated Tools

These automated analysis tools help developers identify technical debt before it becomes a big problem. Tools such as SonarQube help analyse code whenever developers submit a code change. These tools can detect bugs, duplications, and security vulnerabilities.

3. Prioritise Technical Debt in Scrum Based on Risk

Prioritisation techniques such as MoSCoW - must have, should have, could have, won't have will help developers find which issue to prioritise first based on the highest risk. It can also help them to determine which issue should be resolved first.

4. Document Technical Decision

Good documentation helps prevent technical debt from increasing over time. Architecture Decision Record (ADR) is one of the effective ways to help explain why a particular architectural design decision was made, and the reason behind it. This will help previous or current developers to understand, which will make onboarding easy and fix documentation debt.

Check Out: Jira Software Training for Agile Project Management 

How to Deal with Technical Debt as a Scrum Team?

1. Collective Ownership Approach

Team Mindset Shift

• Technical debt is everyone's responsibility across the Scrum teams, not just developers.
• Quality should be integrated into the software rather than checked only at the end.
• Short-term success is not worth long-term problems.
• Technical debt should be openly discussed instead of hidden or avoided.

Shared accountability

Product Owner: Prioritise technical debt alongside the new feature requests in the product backlog.

Developers: Identify and communicate honestly about the issues.

Scrum Master: Ensures that Scrum processes support reducing technical debt.

Quality Assurance: They help prevent technical debt by ensuring quality in the testing process.

2. Identification and Documentation

Team Practices

Debt Radar: During coding, actively looks for technical debt rather than waiting.

Immediate Logging: Creating a task or ticket whenever the debt is found.

Categorisation: Label debt by identifying which type of  ( code, test, design, infrastructure ) the debt belongs to.

Impact Assessment: Evaluate the impact of the technical debt and assign a priority level, such as critical, high, medium, or low, based on its importance and urgency.

Documentation Template

Title - Component and its specific issue.

Type - Code debt / Design debt / Test debt.

Impact - Development speed reduced by 30% for authentication features.

Effort - 3 story points ( The amount of work required to complete the task ).

Risk - Potential security vulnerabilities leaving the technical debt unresolved.

Solution - Refactoring to use the strategy design plan helps resolve the technical debt.

3. Integration into Sprint Workflow

Sprint Planning

• Reviewing the highest priority backlog items as a team.
• Advocate for technical debt stories with a clear explanation of the benefits they provide.
• Include technical debt in allocating part of the sprint capacity planning.
• Address technical debt in the areas of the application that will be modified for upcoming features.

During the Sprint

• Apply the Boy Scout rule to every task. The developers maintain the code in a better condition than they found it.
• Two developers can work together using pair programming on complex refactoring.
• Update the technical debt log during every Scrum.
• Celebrate the small improvements.

Definition of Done Updates

• Ensure that new code does not introduce critical code smells.
• Modify existing parts of an application to resolve any technical debt they encounter.
• If technical debt is created, it should be documented before it is considered complete.
• Code reviews should include a technical debt assessment.

4. Team Strategies and Techniques

The Debt Day Approach

• Spend one day per sprint to reduce technical debt in Scrum
• The whole team focuses on improvements
• The team can use mob programming for more complex problems.
• At the end of the technical debt session, the team shares the improvements they have completed.

Rotation System

• The debt champion rotates the responsibility to another team regularly.
• They identify high-priority technical debt items.
• Facilitates and leads discussions about technical debt during Scrum events.
• Monitors technical debt metrics to determine whether the team improvement efforts are effective.

Technical Debt Backlog

Items in the "ready for sprint" (mostly derived by a Definition of Ready) column are clearly defined and prioritised. This means they are ready for the next sprint. For example:

• Refactoring the payment module.
• Adding a missing user service test.
• Adding deprecated dependencies.

5. Communication Strategies

Making Debt Visible to Stakeholders

• Simple analogies make non-technical stakeholders understand technical debt properly. Like “ deferred maintenance on a car “.
• Explain concrete business impact ( measurable impact ) instead of in technical terms. Like “ feature X takes 3 instead of 1 “.
• Demonstrate measurable improvements, such as reducing build time by 50%.
• Technical debt discussions should always be linked to business outcomes. This enables mobile app integration.

Team communication

Daily Scrum: The team should share challenges like I’m blocked by legacy code in the authentication module.

Sprint review:  Improvements, like increasing automated test coverage from 40% to 70%, will help stakeholders understand how technical debt reduction contributes.

Retrospective: The team may conclude that the technical debt in the authentication module was the biggest impediment during the sprint.

How Does Tech Debt Impact Development

Technical debt in Scrum affects software development in many ways. It slows down product delivery, delays new features, reduces code quality, and increases maintenance costs.

It usually happens when developers take shortcuts to finish work quickly without properly checking code quality, testing the software, or writing documentation.

If technical debt is not addressed, it continues to increase and affects every stage of the software development process.

Once simple tasks become more difficult and take longer to complete, this slows down development and increases the time needed to find and fix bugs.

Technical debt can also reduce the effectiveness of the Scrum pillars of transparency, inspection, and adaptation. Unmanaged technical debt can delay product releases and reduce the organisation's ability to respond quickly to customer needs.

How to Hire Skilled Developers to Reduce Technical Debt?

Hiring professional developers is one of the most effective ways to reduce technical debt in Scrum. Organisations should focus on hiring professionals with technical expertise, problem-solving abilities, and experience in maintaining legacy systems. Like the ones mentioned below:

1. Key Developer Traits to Target

When hiring professionals, organisations should look for analytical and diagnostic skills. Experienced developers are skilled at understanding large documents and complex codebases. They can quickly find problems in the software design without spending months learning the system.

Organisations should also prioritise generalist mindsets. Developers who understand deployment pipelines, databases, and application architecture. Prioritise a highly spirited full-stack or backend generalist over a junior specialist.

Another thing to look for is low-ego developers who can fix the issues with patience. They can also demonstrate traits like being collaborative and communicative and be able to perform incremental refactoring rather than suggesting rewriting the whole system, which can improve the codebase.

2. Structuring the Hiring Process

The hiring process should focus on evaluating practical development skills. Use practical assessments such as paid trial projects, refactoring tasks, practical exercises, or pair programming sessions instead of relying on resumes and theoretical interviews.

Doing practical reference checks goes beyond HR references. Have conversations with shared professional connections and ask if they would rehire the candidate, especially for cleanup and coaching.

Write clear and practical job descriptions. Clearly explain the role, responsibilities, and expected outcomes instead of listing many programming languages, frameworks, and buzzwords.

3. Creating an Environment for Success 

Organisations should assess whether they have experience in using analysis tools such as SonarQube or Code Climate. These tools analyse and detect duplicate code. 

They also have to verify if they have experience in implementing automated testing and working with continuous development and continuous integration pipelines.

Allocate dedicated time for technical debt reduction. Typically, 15%-20% of the team's engineering capacity

How to Handle Technical Debt with AI?

Artificial intelligence is becoming an effective tool for helping Scrum teams identify and analyse issues. AI doesn’t replace developers but acts as an assistant by automating repetitive tasks, suggesting improvements, and scanning large codebases. But it strictly requires human validation and automated coverage before deployment.

Use AI as a Technical Debt Scanner

• Run Code Base Audits

Scrum teams can use AI tools such as Claude Code; It can identify which parts of the codebase have technical debt after analysing the complete codebase. These tools can generate insights such as a coordination complexity score, highlighting the units that are difficult to understand or modify. These regular codebase audits help teams recognise the issues and prioritise refactoring.

• Find Structural Flaws

AI assistant platforms like CAST Software Gatekeeper examine the software architecture to identify structural issues, security risks, or maintainability issues. These tools can rank technical debt in Scrum based on its operational impact.

Automating Refactoring and Remediation

• Generate Missing Tests

Before modifying legacy code, developers can use AI assistants to generate automated tests for existing code. Developers will review the tests generated by AI to confirm accuracy and code quality. These tests can verify the current behaviour of the application.

• Automatic Code Remediation

Development environments and AI assistants like Copilot can provide code cleanup and assist developers in implementing changes.

• Auto-generated Documentation

AI can analyse legacy modules that lack the proper documentation and automatically change code comments and architectural decision records (ADR).

Preventing AI-Generated Debt

• Define Upstream Constraints

Before AI tools generate code or start a task, they should be guided by the organisational architectural standards and policies. These guidelines may include specific anti-pattern designs and meet coding standards.

• Implement Automated Quality Gates

Organisations should treat AI recommendations as untrusted until they pass automated quality checks that verify zero vulnerabilities. They should also need human verification before deployment.

Check Out: Claude Certified Architect – Foundations (CCA-F) Training 

Technical Debt vs. Financial Debt: Why the Comparison Matters

Comparing technical debt in Scrum to financial debt makes it easier for both technical and non-technical stakeholders to understand the concept. 

Technical debt is like borrowing from the future to finish work faster today. But this may help in the short term; it creates problems later. Just as financial debt increases when it is not repaid, technical debt also increases over time if it is ignored. As a result, future development becomes more difficult, time-consuming, and expensive. Small problems can build up into larger ones that are harder to manage. 

Technical debt can be divided into two main types:

Responsible Debt: Taken with full awareness and repayment made in the future, step by step, to complete the payment.

Irresponsible Debt: Taken impulsively without following any plan. Avoiding repayment, which can lead to a burden in the future with lots of debts piled up.

Learn More

When and How to Discuss Technical Debt in Scrum Events?

To discuss technical debt in Scrum, teams must include it in the core ceremonies to balance collaboration and product quality. Here are the details of when and how to discuss technical debt in Scrum events:

1. Sprint Planning

During sprint planning, the development team and the product owner have to collaborate to reduce technical debt in Scrum while balancing new features. Allocate a fixed time cycle for developers according to the team's capability to complete the backlog items with clear value.

2. Daily Scrum

During the daily Scrum, the development team needs to communicate the issues that are impeding progress to reduce the technical debt in Scrum or any recent shortcuts that are blocking the way. The team should highlight existing tech debt. Assisting if needed.

3. Sprint Review

During sprint review, present the real impacts of the improvements to the stakeholders, like reduced bug rates and load time. This can explain the value of this work.

4. Sprint Retrospective

Use the sprint retrospective to inspect the process and identify how the technical debt in Scrum was accumulated. Recognise what the root cause of this debt is. Look for when and where it goes wrong.

5. Backlog Refinement

Create a shared technical debt register on the dashboard where it is visible to everyone, and the product owner will prioritise the technical debt in the product backlog according to its value and the developer's capacity to finish the work.

Is Technical Debt Always a Bad Thing?

Technical debt in Scrum is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, if it is used responsibly and managed strategically, it can help Scrum teams deliver more value quickly. It can help Scrum teams to experiment and learn quickly.

For example, a Scrum team may deliver the minimum viable product(MVP), which is a basic version of a feature, to validate with the customers. Rather than investing too much time in working on it and not meeting customer needs, this will save time and get to know customer interests.

Taking shortcuts to meet deadlines is okay if there’s a plan to address tech debt properly later. The main loophole is when this debt will become permanent. If the technical debt isn’t logged in the product backlog and included in the sprint planning, this is where the trouble starts to begin.

What are the Practical Tips for Scrum Teams?

• Make Technical Debt in Scrum Visible - If the product backlog is not visible to everyone in the team, make it visible, prioritise it, and include the items in the product backlog.
• Address It Regularly - Do not wait until it becomes a huge burden. Allocate time for developers to clear debt based on priority value items.
• Use Retrospectives Wisely - Discuss what quick fixes the team made and whether they should be revisited soon in upcoming sprints.
• Be Strategic about Taking it on - Only prioritise technical debt for high-value gains, whether it will be a success in the market, and needs a quick fix.
• Educate Stakeholders - Business benefit: if there is technical debt in Scrum present today, that could mean slower delivery tomorrow.

What are the Other Ways to Deal with Technical Debt?

Gradual Replacement

Scrum teams can gradually modernise the application by replacing outdated or heavily indebted components one at a time, step by step. Instead of replacing the entire system at once, this approach allows clean replacements while the system is still running.

Preparatory Refactoring

Preparatory refactoring is improving the structure of the existing code before implementing a new feature. This will improve the overall quality of the codebase without interrupting regular development.

Strategic Acceptance

Not all technical debt in Scrum needs to be paid down immediately. To meet a critical product release, shortcutting business requirements can be a valid strategy. The key is to plan to improve it later, like treating it as financial debt.

How to Avoid Technical Debt in Scrum?

• TDD or BDD:  TDD is test-driven development, and BDD is behaviour-driven development. TDD creates a safety net around the existing system. Protecting the investments in existing behaviour while the developers refactor or add new features.
• Pair Programming: Pair programming will encourage developers while writing, designing, and reviewing. This will help detect technical debt early by sharing knowledge within the team and promoting perfect collaboration.
• Continuous Integration: Helps the Scrum team secure important code enhancements and refactoring efforts and safely shared with the rest of the team, improving collaboration and reducing integration issues.

Conclusion

Technical debt in Scrum is an inevitable part of software development, especially in Scrum environments where the team focuses on delivering value through short cycles, completing the product quickly to meet deadlines and deliver business value.

Completing the task quickly is necessary, but this can lead to technical debt, where they have to face even huge, complex problems in the future. So, while completing the product quickly, they have to maintain the product backlog by improving the quality of the code and fixing the issues efficiently. 

But this is not necessarily a bad thing; this can also make the developers learn and come up with better solutions. This will be helpful only if they maintain the debt as if it were a financial problem by repaying it. 

Spending dedicated time to manage technical debt based on the priority of backlog items helps improve the development process. This makes the product maintainable, increases its chances of success in the market, and helps meet customer expectations.

Technical Debt in Scrum - Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is technical debt in Scrum?

Technical debt becomes a major problem when developers ignore it. It builds up over time because of the shortcuts taken to complete the product quickly during the development process.

2.  How can you prevent technical debt?

Prevent technical debt by running automation tests and regularly reviewing code. Follow a clear structure and codebases.

3. Is technical debt always bad?

Technical debt is not always bad unless it is avoided and debt racks up, which will be too hard to maintain. It is considered a good practice for developers when they learn from it and manage the debt efficiently.

4. Who pays for technical debt?

Technical debt is paid by the company or business because of its maintenance cost, loss of productivity, and slower delivery of features. Developers will pay with their time and effort by refactoring and fixing the debt.

5. How do you measure technical debt?

Measure code by tracking it to detect issues and running automated code tests using platforms like SonarQube.

6. How to handle technical debt in Scrum?

Manage technical debt in Scrum by continuously prioritising refactoring items to fix. Spend a dedicated amount of time reducing technical debt.

7. What are common examples of technical debt in Scrum?

Common examples in Scrum include outdated documentation, manual testing by developers, low test coverage, bugs, and delayed updates; these will cause technical debt to continue to grow.

8. How to Avoid Technical Debt in Scrum?

The key to avoiding technical debt in Scrum is dedicating the fixed portion of the team's capacity to refactoring and automation testing.

9. Why does technical debt happen in Scrum?

Technical debt happens in Scrum when teams prioritise quick, short-term deliveries over long-term code health.

There is no single factor behind this. It’s a collective failure of responsibility. The combination of the following reasons is the primary cause:

• Rushed Deadlines and Delivery Pressure
• Strategic or "Unplanned" Choices
• Lack of Visibility and Transparency
• Insufficient Testing and Documentation

10. Who is responsible for technical debt in Scrum?

The entire Scrum Team shares the responsibility for technical debt.

• Developers: Must fix the bugs and clean the code.
• Product Owners: Must prioritise these fixes in the backlog based on business value and customer needs.
• Scrum Masters: Responsible for guiding the team on Scrum principles.

All three collaborate to ensure the codebase remains healthy and sustainable.

11. What is the difference between technical debt and bugs?

Technical debt is a temporary fix to deliver the software faster, while bugs are unintended defects that will change the program's behaviour completely.

12. Can technical debt be added to the Product Backlog?

Yes, Technical debt can be added to the product backlog to track the issues and be prioritised along with new features.

13. How does the Definition of Done help reduce technical debt?

The definition of Done helps prevent unverified work and invisible shortcuts from accumulating in the codebase.

14. Does technical debt affect Sprint velocity? 

 Yes, Technical debt affects sprint velocity as unresolved issues will be piled up. team wastes time on rework and bug fixes, which can decrease the business value in each sprint.

15. Should technical debt be estimated in Story Points? 

Estimating technical debt by story points is not recommended because it can cause unpredictable defects all along with value-driven features. Instead of this, they can spend time fixing the issues according to their capacity.

16. Can technical debt be part of the Sprint Goal? 

Yes, Technical debt can be part of the sprint goal if it directly delivers business value, fixes critical bugs, and reduces risks.

17. What is Scrum Master's role in managing technical debt? 

Scrum Masters will facilitate collaboration with the product owner to prioritise the backlog. Makes the technical debt visible and understandable to the whole team so they can address it.

18. How do you communicate technical debt's cost to non-technical stakeholders? 

Explaining the technical debt in business terms as financial risks, like it will delay product delivery and incur higher maintenance costs.

19. Is there a "healthy" amount of technical debt? 

Yes, a small amount of deliberate (uncertain/intentional/planned) technical debt can be healthy. Especially for startups that need to meet important deadlines or release products quickly. But, accidental debt is dangerous and leads to costly rework if ignored.

20. How does technical debt relate to the Scrum value of "Courage"? 

Teams need to be transparent about the existing debt rather than chasing new features. It takes courage to say no to work that causes future bugs, destroys productivity, and wastes time.