> the bug is fixed, therefore contract conditions have been met, therefore the work is done
Agile-type workflows also push toward this kind of prioritization— focus on story points, requested features, value delivered to the "customer", etc etc. It's obviously important, especially if the task at hand is to rein in a team consumed with grand rewrites and architecture astronaut stuff.
But at a certain point, the pendulum has swung too far the other way, and you do need competent technical oversight— not just someone who assigns you a sprint or two to "pay down debt", but who engages meaningfully in understanding what the debt is, how it came about, and what the ongoing cost is of carrying it; and who can actually set milestones on the cleanup effort and communicate to the larger organization how it was valuable work to have done.
> But at a certain point, the pendulum has swung too far the other way, and you do need competent technical oversight— not just someone who assigns you a sprint or two to "pay down debt"
yep, if you are truly agile, you will be continuously improving the whole system you are working on otherwise it gets harder and slower to "deliver stories" to your customers... its a balance to be sure.
Oh definitely, but that requires everyone to be on the same page about that, that every feature has a built in overhead of whatever% time allotted to general maintenance. Otherwise it's just a prisoner's dilemma where the one guy who doesn't do any of that work will be at the top of the list for promotion because he gets 30% more done than anyone else, as measured in story points.
Agile-type workflows also push toward this kind of prioritization— focus on story points, requested features, value delivered to the "customer", etc etc. It's obviously important, especially if the task at hand is to rein in a team consumed with grand rewrites and architecture astronaut stuff.
But at a certain point, the pendulum has swung too far the other way, and you do need competent technical oversight— not just someone who assigns you a sprint or two to "pay down debt", but who engages meaningfully in understanding what the debt is, how it came about, and what the ongoing cost is of carrying it; and who can actually set milestones on the cleanup effort and communicate to the larger organization how it was valuable work to have done.