Technical debt is not the problem; the problem is when nobody knows how much we owe. The key is visibility and clear agreements with product.
Classify by impact
Not all debt is equal. I split it into three levels: blocks growth, causes incidents, or is just annoying. Only the first group goes into the roadmap.
Estimate the interest
The longer we wait, the more expensive it becomes. If a debt makes every delivery take 20% more time, the interest is easy to justify.
The 10% rule
We reserve 10% of each sprint to pay prioritized debt. It is small, but constant. If there are spikes, we negotiate with data.
Simple post-mortem
When something fails, we write one page with cause, action, and date. That turns chaos into an actionable backlog.
Debt does not disappear; it is managed. With a light system, it becomes a business decision, not a constant fire.