Joy Ebertz, Principal Engineer at Imprint, presented a six-question framework at QCon London 2026 for prioritizing technical debt rather than eliminating all of it. The framework asks: what is the cost of doing nothing, what is the cost of fixing it, is a proper fix necessary, is now the right time, will the project reach completion, and will it actually improve things? Ebertz challenges the perfectionist mindset that all debt must be resolved, advocates for 80% solutions when appropriate, and encourages translating technical decisions into financial terms to build business cases. She also addresses AI's growing role in producing lower-quality code faster, distinguishing between debt that is hard to fix (data migrations, security vulnerabilities) and debt that is easier to address (walled-off components, internal tools).
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