Tech Debt
This skill helps identify, categorize, and prioritize technical debt within a software project. It provides a framework for scoring debt items based on impac...
Install
npx promptshop add tech-debtDetails
What This Skill Does
- This skill helps identify, categorize, and prioritize technical debt within a software project.
- It provides a framework for scoring debt items based on impact, risk, and effort, enabling teams to create a prioritized remediation plan.
- It is useful for engineering managers and tech leads.
When to Use
- Identify areas of technical debt.
- Prioritize tech debt remediation.
- Justify tech debt fixes to stakeholders.
- Create a phased remediation plan.
- Assess the impact and risk of tech debt.
- Categorize different types of tech debt.
Key Features
- Categorizes tech debt (code, architecture, test).
- Prioritizes debt based on impact, risk, and effort.
- Estimates effort and business justification.
- Creates a phased remediation plan.
- Identifies risks of not addressing debt.
- Helps manage dependencies and documentation.
Manual Installation
Tech Debt Management
Systematically identify, categorize, and prioritize technical debt.
Categories
| Type | Examples | Risk |
|---|---|---|
| Code debt | Duplicated logic, poor abstractions, magic numbers | Bugs, slow development |
| Architecture debt | Monolith that should be split, wrong data store | Scaling limits |
| Test debt | Low coverage, flaky tests, missing integration tests | Regressions ship |
| Dependency debt | Outdated libraries, unmaintained dependencies | Security vulns |
| Documentation debt | Missing runbooks, outdated READMEs, tribal knowledge | Onboarding pain |
| Infrastructure debt | Manual deploys, no monitoring, no IaC | Incidents, slow recovery |
Prioritization Framework
Score each item on: Impact: How much does it slow the team down? (1-5) Risk: What happens if we don't fix it? (1-5) Effort: How hard is the fix? (1-5, inverted — lower effort = higher priority)
Priority = (Impact + Risk) x (6 - Effort)
Output
Produce a prioritized list with estimated effort, business justification for each item, and a phased remediation plan that can be done alongside feature work.
Debt Management