# Technical debt register · [Product] · [Date] **Owner:** [PM and engineering lead] **Review:** quarterly, and before each roadmap cycle | ID | Area or service | Description | Quadrant (deliberate or inadvertent; prudent or reckless) | Interest being paid (evidence) | Change frequency of the area | Principal (effort range) | Risk if left (security, compliance, scale) | Proposed fix and first slice | Owner | Decision (pay now / schedule / accept / retire) | Review date | |---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---| | TD-1 | | | | | | | | | | | | ## Ranking rule Rank by interest paid times change frequency. Pay down where the code changes most. Leave stable, rarely touched code alone. ## Evidence of interest (use the business's terms) - Slower lead time on roadmap items: [ ] - Incidents traced to this area: [ ] - Escalations or SLA misses: [ ] - Roadmap items blocked: [ ] - Onboarding drag for new engineers: [ ] ## Capacity reserved for debt this quarter [Share or person-days, set from history], agreed by [ ]