Technical debt is a bit of a fuzzy problem that is hard to explain without a lot of platitudes to a non technical person. Instead of doing that, the key to sta

Technical debt is a bit of a fuzzy problem that is hard to explain without a lot of platitudes to a non technical person. Instead of doing that, the key to staying on top of keeping your tech stack in a sane state is to assign ownership of it to a person that knows what they are doing that can effectively counter the pressure from non technical persons in the organization to move faster. It's all about prioritizing correctly in the end and that's not a job you can give to a non technical product manager. I actually am a CTO that is also responsible for a lot of the day to day product management. So, I get to wear both hats. My job is not to blindly execute somebody else's vision but to actually create and define the vision and adjust to needs and wants of our business based on what is technically possible with our stack and ensure that that stack is ready to do so. Additionally, I need to stay ahead of this game and a lot of what we do technically is about being ready for what I can see coming next rather than just reacting to current needs. The game here is avoiding over engineering while at the same time spotting and removing technical bottlenecks. Technical product management is a thing; or rather it should be in almost any team. It's a natural progression for a technical leader to also start paying attention to what they are building and why. I've been interacting with product managers for years and have many product manager friends. Working with them instead of against them is key. Technical product management requires somebody with technical know how as well as a sense of the business and its priority. A non technical PM is the wrong person for this job. If you have such a person guarding technical quality and business alignment, things run much smoother than if you have a lot of people bickering with each other over technical perfection or doing quick fixes.