Maintaining larger projects makes it more difficult to balance refactoring and upgrade tasks according to its actual value. Consider to create and periodically maintain a summary, which helps you and your team in the decision which refactoring task should be taken next.

Template

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Here is an template on how you might categorize your tasks:

Tip

Avoid generic phrases like "reduced future" or "speeds up future development" as explanation since they are true for nearly all tasks.

Side notes

• Try to avoid adding too small tasks to this sheet (e.g. a tasks that can be done within a few hours) or tasks that are part of a story (e.g. continuing refactoring)
• It protects yourself from prioritizing less important topics too high (e.g. we must now move from PostgreSQL to SQLite, when having a problem with PostgreSQL in the current story)
• Using a table for this summary is just an example, you could also use your story board if it works for your team
• The score 0-5 is just an example, you could also use t-shirt sizes (s, m, l, xl, xxl) or other measure units

Example