Technical debt - How to pay?

Like tax and death in life, no team can avoid technical debt in software development. Therefore we need means to manage it. To manage technical debt three broad strategies are used:

• Buffer stories
• Buffer tasks
• Technical debt paying releases

Buffer stories

Team can set aside approx. 10% of velocity per release for technical debt paying stories. This will set the expectation of business stakeholders in each sprint and help to maintain relatively technical debt free software.  These stories are created by dev team. If story is focused on function debt, let PO drive it.

Buffer tasks

During task break down (in Sprint planning meeting), if required, technical debt paying buffer task is created and budgeted. This approach ensures ease in scheduling but also raises the risk of spending resources on not so important things.

Technical debt paying releases

Instead of paying a little in each sprint, team may decide to devote larger chunk of resources periodically (generally every 6 month). This approach is works well where sprints are going on for multiple years. In this approach a risk of mounting debt always lingers on. Team should avoid Technical debt paying release just after a frenzied, time-critical and feature heavy release.

I am sure there are more ways to pay back debt.  I like to hear from you more.