How can Scrum teams measure technical debt?

Follow On:

Ways to measure and manage technical debt:

• Code quality tools (SonarQube, CodeClimate)
• Automated test coverage
• Bug rates and frequency of rework
• Velocity trends — slowed delivery may indicate rising debt
• Team feedback in Retrospectives

Make it visible:

• Track known debt in the Product Backlog.
• Reserve capacity every Sprint to pay it down.

Example:

After frequent issues with legacy code, a team estimates and logs 5 technical debt stories,

prioritizing the worst ones during each Sprint.