Technical Debt for Product Managers

A small checkout change can require work across several systems, while a proposed technical improvement competes with new features. Technical Debt for Product Managers examines how accumulated debt can contribute to those constraints and how Product and Engineering can assess what to address.

Describe the problem before choosing an intervention

The book distinguishes technical debt from bugs, maintenance and other technical improvements. It examines signs of accumulation and the consequences for development effort, product quality and future options. That distinction helps define what a proposal is intended to change and what may happen if it is postponed.

Compare technical investment with product opportunities

Cost and risk assessment are connected to prioritization criteria, frameworks and business cases. The discussion covers when to intervene, how much effort to allocate and how to explain the consequences to stakeholders. Refactoring, rewrites and incremental improvements are examined as alternatives with different commitments.

Planning an intervention includes defining the result to look for and evaluating what changed afterwards. The book places this work within regular product planning, alongside the commercial needs and new features competing for the team’s capacity.

Work through the decisions at Mercato

Mercato is a fictional commerce platform whose Product and Engineering teams face decisions about promotions, payments, checkout and scalability. Practical resources support documenting, assessing and prioritizing debt, and a final case study connects the main concepts. The material is intended for Product Managers and Product Owners and does not require advanced programming knowledge.

For the system context behind a technical proposal, continue with Software Architecture for Product Managers. CI/CD and Releases for Product Managers covers how changes reach production.

To apply these concepts to an initiative with your team, the Technical Debt Toolkit includes editable assessment, prioritization, business case and tracking templates, with a complete worked example.