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World Congress 2023 • Oct 23, 2023

Product Managers' Eternal Battle with Refactoring

Justyna Walkowska

Stop fighting over technical debt. Learn how to bridge the gap between product and engineering by framing code refactoring as a rigorous, measurable business decision.

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#1 about 1 min

Managing the core conflict over software refactoring

Resolving developer and product friction requires treating code cleanup as measurable and manageable work.

#2 about 2 min

Defining refactoring as a safe and incremental process

True technical restructuring involves applying small code modifications that preserve existing software behavior.

#3 about 3 min

Five team approaches to handling engineering refactoring work

Strategies for integrating code cleanup range from strict roadmap allocation to complete avoidance.

#4 about 2 min

Identifying good and bad reasons to restructure code

Valid development rewrites alleviate concrete business risks rather than merely adopting trendy programming paradigms.

#5 about 2 min

Measuring the concrete business value of technical improvements

Code improvements justify their execution time by decreasing production errors and accelerating developer onboarding.

#6 about 1 min

Using cost of delay to prioritize engineering tasks

Weighing technical maintenance against new features involves calculating the financial consequences of delaying either initiative.

#7 about 2 min

Aligning engineers and product managers on technical tasks

Developers must articulate the business problems being solved while product managers demand comprehensible explanations before approving work.

Matching moments

2:25 min

Balancing urgent feature deadlines with ongoing refactoring needs

Gerrit Stapper · WWC 2022

1:09 min

Identifying bottlenecks in sprint routines and product management

Milton Leon Rodriguez Milton Leon Rodriguez · WWC 2025

6:44 min

Balancing technical debt reduction with feature delivery

Jens Happe Jens Happe · LIVE

4:11 min

Applying targeted practices to reduce waste and technical debt

Tobias Modig · LIVE

2:39 min

Translating technical debt into business language for management alignment

Adam Tornhill · Coffee With Developers

5:30 min

Translating technical improvements into measurable business value

Hendrik Lösch Hendrik Lösch · WWC Europe 2026

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