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Equation #7 · Chapter 2
Technical Debt Compound Rate D_comp
Technical Debt Compound Rate
D_comp · Ch 2Bugs found ÷ bugs fixed. Above 1.0 the team is underwater.
Worked example — A six-person platform team's tracker
About forty new bugs arrive every week. They close about thirty. Nobody is lazy; the backlog just grows by ten every Friday.
It came out at 1.33. Yellow — ten more every week than they can close.
Do not pitch this team a migration. They are drowning, and a blueprint is not a flotation device. Pitch one thing that removes a whole class of bug, get found under fixed, and talk about the blueprint next quarter.
Your turn — change one number
Result1.33
Yellow. Treading water. One bad sprint from sinking.