Practice technical debt reduction vocabulary: debt sprints, capacity allocation, debt blocking features, debt paydown outcomes, and backlog estimation.
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'We're allocating 20% of _____ to debt.' What resource is being divided between features and debt work?
'Capacity' is the engineering team's available work bandwidth. Allocating 20% to debt is a common sustainable approach to preventing debt accumulation while continuing feature delivery.
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'The debt item is _____ feature X.' What relationship makes this debt item urgent?
When a debt item is 'blocking' a feature, it becomes a higher priority than general debt work because it is directly preventing business value from being delivered.
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'We paid down the debt — the build time dropped by _____.' What improved?
'Dropped by 40%' is the specific outcome quoted. Measuring build time before and after debt paydown demonstrates the concrete value of the work to the team and stakeholders.
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'The debt is now in the _____ with a size estimate.' Where is debt tracked as work items?
Placing debt items in the backlog with size estimates treats them like any other work item — making them visible, prioritizable, and schedulable alongside feature work.
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A 'debt reduction sprint' is best described as:
A debt reduction sprint allocates focused time (either a whole sprint or a fixed capacity fraction) specifically for paying down technical debt, separate from normal feature development.