Planning Poker Template
Technical Debt Sizing
Estimate tech debt payoff effort before it spirals out of control
Bring the engineering team together to size technical debt items using Fibonacci points. Quantifying payoff effort makes it easier to justify debt-reduction work to stakeholders and to decide which items to address in the next sprint. Pairing effort estimates with impact scores enables a cost-of-delay conversation grounded in data.
Deck type
fibonacci
Duration
60 minutes
Team size
3–8 engineers
Estimation focus
Payoff effort and risk reduction
Steps
- 01Collect tech debt items from the engineering backlog or post-mortems
- 02Briefly describe each item — what it is, why it matters
- 03Vote on the effort to address it (not the cost of ignoring it)
- 04Reveal and discuss splits — often reveals disagreement on approach
- 05Record the estimate and the agreed remediation approach
- 06Prioritize the list by effort-to-impact ratio
When to use
During a quarterly tech health review, or when debt is slowing feature delivery noticeably. Run with engineers only — product can join at the end to see the prioritized list.
Related templates
Open this template in a room
Create a free Plandeck room pre-configured with this template. No signup required.