I am a senior product manager for a large financial technology company.
Over the years I have learnt to become comfortable with allowing my engineering teams to refactor code whilst delivering new functionality.
This has been a process and largely one of trust between me and the engineering leads.
It has also helped that I have seen payback from the investment made from reducing down the debt in terms of us delivering new functionality quicker and less error prone code. Although, this payback can take a while to see (6months + which is a long time for a product person operating in a competitive space!)
Most of my managers don't get this or if they do they are too blinded by immediate kpi's from further above they can't justify it so in most cases I just tell the engineering guys to add a spread to their estimates to cover the paydown of the debt.
Over they years this has definitely helped me build tighter relationships with engineers which as any product manager knows can have huge benefits.
Over the years I have learnt to become comfortable with allowing my engineering teams to refactor code whilst delivering new functionality.
This has been a process and largely one of trust between me and the engineering leads.
It has also helped that I have seen payback from the investment made from reducing down the debt in terms of us delivering new functionality quicker and less error prone code. Although, this payback can take a while to see (6months + which is a long time for a product person operating in a competitive space!)
Most of my managers don't get this or if they do they are too blinded by immediate kpi's from further above they can't justify it so in most cases I just tell the engineering guys to add a spread to their estimates to cover the paydown of the debt.
Over they years this has definitely helped me build tighter relationships with engineers which as any product manager knows can have huge benefits.