| name | skill-tech-debt |
| description | Tech debt inventory, paydown strategy, prioritization (Critical/High/Medium/Low), deprecation planning, communicating to stakeholders, refactoring initiatives. Use when managing technical debt, planning paydown, or assessing refactoring ROI. |
| version | 1.0.0 |
Skill: Tech Debt Management
Track, prioritize, and pay down tech debt systematically. Don't let it spiral.
Tech Debt Scoring
Impact × Effort Matrix:
LOW EFFORT → HIGH EFFORT
HIGH | Quick wins | Strategic |
IMPACT | | |
LOW | Skip (low ROI)| Avoid |
Quick wins: High impact, low effort → Do first
Strategic: High impact, high effort → Plan next quarter
Skip: Low impact, any effort → Only if free time
Inventory Template
## Tech Debt Inventory: [Service]
### CRITICAL (Ship next sprint)
- [ ] Remove Python 2 support (ends 2025, blockers future deps)
- Effort: 2 weeks
- Impact: Unblocks 5 dependencies
- Owner: Backend lead
### HIGH (Backlog, 10% capacity/sprint)
- [ ] Refactor auth middleware (5 places copy-pasted)
- Effort: 1 week
- Impact: Reduces bugs, improves maintainability
- Owner: TBD
### MEDIUM (Nice to have)
- [ ] Extract common utils from 3 services
- Effort: 3 weeks (spans services)
- Impact: Code reuse
### LOW (Skip unless free time)
- [ ] Rename internal variable
- Effort: 1 hour
- Impact: Readability (minimal)
Paydown Strategy
Allocate 10% of sprint to tech debt:
- 80% features (business value)
- 10% tech debt (internal quality)
- 10% bugs (production stability)
Communicate ROI:
Tech debt paydown: Remove Python 2 support
- Effort: 2 weeks (1 engineer)
- Unblocks: 5 dependencies (new features)
- Prevents: 3+ security issues (old Python 2 libs)
- ROI: High (enables future work)
Deprecation Planning
v1.0: Old API endpoint alive
v1.5: Announce deprecation (email, docs)
v2.0: Mark endpoints as "deprecated" (header warning)
v2.5: Remove endpoint (6 months later)
Status: Ready for tech debt management
Best for: Debt prioritization, paydown planning, refactoring
