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Technical debt interest
Put a cost on carrying technical debt and the payback from paying it down.
Strategic IT & enterprise architectureHow it's worked out
- Interest = hours lost per sprint × sprints × hourly cost. Payback = remediation cost ÷ yearly saving
- Lost hours measured or estimated per sprint
NoteTeams usually estimate lost hours on the high side; sample a few sprints with time tracking first.
Source: Cunningham (1992) technical debt metaphor; SQALE method
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VVnT SeQuor's Strategic IT & Architecture Advisory practice helps teams turn this metric into a plan.