As per the title, any engineering team has no doubt had the conversations about to get technical debt prioritised, especially when the backlog or roadmap is bursting with features and tasks that sales just can't live without.

One thing that's resonated with me recently is a terminology change we've recently made, which I find helps makes those conversations a lot more constructive than they used to be.

Value now vs more value later

It's simple, but focusing on that 'value' keyword has changed the dynamic of those conversations to be much more beneficial for all sides. Getting engineers to think about the value proposition that addressing some particular debt will have in the long term has been somewhat eye opening in helping them assert if a particular piece of debt is really worth addressing or not.

And likewise, for stakeholders having conversations focused on how this is going to allow for more value in the future helps them to understand the tradeoffs better, making it easier for them to prioritise engineering items against the roadmap items they tend to better understand.