We invested 10% to pay back tech debt - Here's what happened

I pretty much skimmed quickly until I hit “Execution.” Nice story, even inspirational! Sounds like a good model to emulate.

Very cool explanation. However, I wonder what the right % of time we should spend on technical debt and refactoring? 20%? 30%?

Anything beyond 30% means we're probably not doing a good job to begin with, and anything less than 10% probably means there is significant upside productivity potential if we were to invest more resources in paying back technical debt and / or refactoring code.

Good story.

Smartest thing I've read all day. I found myself nodding along the whole time. If only more managers/companies thought like you then things would run a lot more efficiently.

I wish you were my boss at my last company. Had the same issues, and the answer was always to find a workaround. I left in the end, of course. Nothing is sustainable if it's built on workarounds. Eventually, the problems need to be fixed. Brilliant write-up and solutions.