The Myth of the 20% Tech Debt Allocation

Why better classification leads to better engineering investment decisions Technology Cost and Investment Many Agile teams follow a familiar rule of thumb: reserve 20% of every sprint, quarter, or release cycle for “technical debt.” On the surface, it sounds balanced. The business gets 80% of capacity for new features, while engineering gets 20% to keep the system healthy. Over the years, however, I have come to believe that the issue is not the allocation itself.