Using Stepsize in your planning process

Stepsize brings a new level of visibility to tech debt.

The best way to ensure reported issues get fixed is to make good practices a habit during your sprint cycles. Stepsize is the ideal tool for this.

Haven't invited your team to Stepsize yet? Open the Stepsize web app and head to Settings > Members. Head over to our guide on inviting collaborators for more information.

Allocating resource to fixing issues

Teams that have a strategy for managing tech debt ship 50% faster. When teams use Stepsize to do this, they ship 3 times faster.

To manage tech debt effectively, pay it back quickly and regularly.

Here are two methods your team could use:

1. Allocate 15-20% of resources to refactoring code and fixing bugs in every sprint cycle

2. Allocate entire sprints to deal with tech debt on a regular basis, such as every quarter

Planning to fix tech debt

Use a portion of your team's sprint planning to agree which issues to prioritise.

For example, you could

• Prioritise issues which impact the current work

• Prioritise issues which are lowering morale

Identifying issues to fix using the visualisation tool

At the top of the Stepsize sidebar, navigate to Visualisation.

The visualisation shows you a visual representation of your codebase, which acts as a heamap for issues in your codebase.

You can filter your visualisation based on tags your team uses.

Using the Visualisation tool in Stepsize

What next?

Stepsize has a range of powerful tools which help you surface tech debt during your code review process. Learn more about this in the next guide.