---
title: "The 25 Percent Rule for Tackling Technical Debt"
description: "Technical debt is framed as four categories that need different responses: yearly debt may involve rewrites or gradual replacement, monthly debt requires team-sized planning, weekly debt can become a sprint card, and daily debt is code tidying during ordinary work. The article cautions that some apparent yearly debt reflects growth or changing markets rather than a past mistake, while smaller debt can be deferred only if it is recorded and scheduled. The proposed 25-percent allocation gives 10% to daily improvements, 10% to weekly work, and 5% to planning monthly and yearly debt, with the latter focused on prioritization rather than implementation. Its conclusion is that sustainable remediation depends on team culture: engineers need permission and encouragement to refactor, teams need space to schedule broader work, and leaders need to weigh costs and tradeoffs."
---

# The 25 Percent Rule for Tackling Technical Debt

[Shopify](https://yomu.fyi/company/shopify) · 2023-10-18 · Feb 16, 2023

**Type:** Explainer

## Summary

Technical debt is framed as four categories that need different responses: yearly debt may involve rewrites or gradual replacement, monthly debt requires team-sized planning, weekly debt can become a sprint card, and daily debt is code tidying during ordinary work. The article cautions that some apparent yearly debt reflects growth or changing markets rather than a past mistake, while smaller debt can be deferred only if it is recorded and scheduled. The proposed 25-percent allocation gives 10% to daily improvements, 10% to weekly work, and 5% to planning monthly and yearly debt, with the latter focused on prioritization rather than implementation. Its conclusion is that sustainable remediation depends on team culture: engineers need permission and encouragement to refactor, teams need space to schedule broader work, and leaders need to weigh costs and tradeoffs.

## Context

Teams struggle to discuss and address technical debt because daily improvements, sprint-sized work, and large refactors require different amounts of time and different decision processes. Pressure to ship, uncertainty about whether remediation time is worthwhile, and the low visibility of refactoring can discourage people from addressing debt.

## Approach / What changed

Allocate 25% of engineering time across debt categories: up to 10% for improving code already being worked on, 10% for team-level weekly debt tracked through project cards, and 5% for planning and prioritizing monthly and yearly debt. The approach emphasizes cultural permission, encouragement, and explicit consideration of costs, benefits, timing, and tradeoffs.

## Takeaways

- The framework assigns 10% of time to daily code improvements and another 10% to weekly debt, which can be scheduled as team project cards rather than handled immediately by the person who discovers them.
- The remaining 5% is for planning monthly and yearly debt, including understanding the problem, deciding whether intervention is needed, and determining how and when it could be done.
- Some large system problems may result from growth or changing markets rather than prior technical mistakes, so labeling them as debt can distract from addressing the underlying change.

**Tags:** [Architecture](https://yomu.fyi/topic/architecture), [Developer Experience](https://yomu.fyi/topic/developer-experience), [Refactoring](https://yomu.fyi/topic/refactoring)

- Source: [Shopify](https://shopify.engineering/technical-debt-25-percent-rule)
- Source URL: https://shopify.engineering/technical-debt-25-percent-rule
- Ingested by Yomu: 2026-08-30T13:21:54.102Z

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