In 2020, I joined Zalando as the manager of one of their core engineering teams. One of the problems I faced was that there was too much focus on delivering new features, without ensuring that the codebase remained in good shape. In order to address this problem, I set up a process for systematically reducing our technical debt. Originally, I wrote an article on my approach for our intranet in early 2021. Recently, I was invited to revise my article for Zalando’s public engineering blog. My article “A Systematic Approach to Reducing Technical Debt”, is most relevant for engineering managers at fast-moving companies. It is even more relevant if you are not given a fixed time budget for maintenance work.