Technical Debt Management Strategy

Design a technical debt management strategy for [Team/Company]. Include: 1) Debt identification — create taxonomy of tech debt types (code, architecture, infrastructure, documentation, test, dependency), define how each type manifests. 2) Debt inventory — audit template for cataloging existing debt, severity scoring (impact on velocity, reliability, security, developer experience). 3) Quantification framework — map debt to engineering time cost (hours/sprint), incident correlation, developer satisfaction impact, recruitment/retention risk. 4) Prioritization matrix — plot debt items on effort vs impact matrix, categorize as: critical (fix now), strategic (plan for), cosmetic (boy scout rule), acceptable (live with). 5) Budget allocation — recommend percentage of sprint capacity for debt reduction (typically 15-25%), how to negotiate with product partners, how to frame debt work as business investment. 6) Prevention practices — definition of done that prevents new debt, architecture decision records (ADRs), code review standards, dependency update automation. 7) Tracking and reporting — debt dashboard metrics, trend analysis, velocity correlation, quarterly debt review process. 8) Cultural practices — blameless debt acknowledgment, tech debt retrospectives, 'debt sprint' quarterly events.