Free Technical Debt Tracking Template (Notion)

Track all debt items with auto-calculated costs. Key fields:

• Severity - 🔴 Critical → 🟠 High → 🟡 Medium → 🟢 Low
• Category - Code Quality, Architecture, Infrastructure, Testing, Security, Documentation
• Cost Formula - Estimated Fix Time × Hourly Rate × 40 (auto-calculated)
• Status Workflow - 🔍 Identified → 📋 Planned → 🔄 In Progress → ✅ Resolved

Sample data: 15 realistic items like "Refactor authentication service" (🔴 Critical, 3 weeks, $9,000) and "Fix N+1 queries" (🔴 Critical, 1 week, $3,000)

Monitor TDR and velocity trends over time. Key fields:

• Development Cost - Team Size × Avg Salary × (Months / 12) (auto-calculated)
• Velocity - Story points per sprint to track productivity impact
• Team Metrics - Size, average salary, active months

Sample data: 4 quarters showing realistic trends (Q1: 45 velocity baseline → Q4: 38 velocity decline from accumulating debt)

Use the Tech Debt Cost Calculator to establish your annual maintenance baseline using Stripe's 42% benchmark.

Workflow:

1. Enter team size and average salary
2. See annual cost at 42% (global avg) vs 33% (best-in-class)
3. Use as your "total addressable debt" for exec conversations
4. Compare to Debt Registry total for coverage

Use the TDR Calculator for quarterly reviews and scenario planning.

Workflow:

1. Get Development Cost from Quarterly Tracker (auto-calculated)
2. Sum Estimated Cost for unresolved items in Debt Registry
3. Input both into TDR Calculator
4. Review TDR %, severity breakdown, scenario planning
5. Model "what if we dedicate 20% capacity?"

Use the ROI Calculator to justify dedicated refactoring time to leadership.

Workflow:

1. Pick high-impact debt item from registry
2. Estimate velocity gain (e.g., +15% faster)
3. Input remediation cost (from Estimated Cost field)
4. Review break-even timeline and cumulative ROI
5. Use for quarterly planning and executive asks

• Development Cost: 10 × $135,000 × (3/12) = $337,500
• Remediation Cost: Sum of unresolved items = $73,500
• TDR: ($73,500 / $337,500) × 100 = 21.8%

TDR above 20% signals trouble. Combined with 16% velocity decline, this made the case for action.

Engineering lead exported Quarterly Tracker showing:

• Q2: 50 velocity, resolved CI/CD debt
• Q3: 42 velocity (16% drop), TDR at 21.8%
• Projected Q4: 35 velocity if no action taken

Leadership approved 30% sprint capacity for top 5 Critical items. By Q4:

• TDR dropped to 12.4% (from 21.8%)
• Velocity recovered to 48 points/sprint (14% improvement)
• Customer-reported bugs down 35%

The template provided the data backbone for this entire process—from discovery to justification to tracking progress.

Teams routinely underestimate remediation work by 30-50%. Combat this with:

• Use historical velocity data to calibrate estimates
• Add a 1.3× multiplier for complex architectural changes
• Include testing and documentation time in estimates
• Review and adjust estimates after completing similar work

A registry with 100+ Low severity items becomes noise. Focus on:

• Start with Critical and High severity only
• Only add Medium items if they have clear business impact
• Use ❌ Won't Fix status to document intentional decisions
• Archive resolved items quarterly to keep the active list manageable

TDR without velocity trends misses half the story. Make sure to:

• Add velocity to every Quarterly Tracker row
• Plot velocity trend alongside TDR for leadership presentations
• Correlate velocity drops with specific unresolved debt items
• Use velocity recovery as proof that remediation worked

The template is a starting point. Adapt it:

• Add custom categories (Performance, UX Debt, Operational)
• Adjust Hourly Rate to match your team's actual cost
• Add custom properties (Jira Link, Owner Team, Customer Impact)
• Create filtered views by service, owner, or quarter for team-specific tracking