Why Tech Debt Backlogs Stay Stuck

▶ Watch (01:20)

Tech debt loses the scheduling fight for a structural reason: features are competitive advantage. Engineers add backlog items that sit for over a year while the team ships product instead. Over time the codebase slows velocity, becomes fragile, and eventually someone calls for a full rewrite. Ellich’s word for that outcome: “it sucks.” Top engineers leave the codebase. Institutional knowledge walks out with them. The fix never involves actually addressing the debt that caused the problem.

Copilot Coding Agent as a Parallel Workstream

▶ Watch (03:13)

Copilot Coding Agent is always available and never deprioritizes boring tasks. Create a GitHub issue, assign it to Copilot, and a PR appears in roughly 8-10 minutes. In the Copilot test-coverage demo (03:54), Ellich assigned a test-writing task live, then opened a completed PR to show the full session log, every added test visible for review. You interact with the result like any other PR: comment, ask follow-up questions, approve, and merge.

Writing Issues the Agent Can Act On

▶ Watch (05:57)

Vague issues produce vague PRs. Ellich’s fix: write every issue as if handing it to someone who has never seen the codebase. Use a descriptive title that names the component and folder, not just the symptom. Add enough context for a newcomer to start. Include an example of the pattern you want applied so the agent can replicate it across the rest of the codebase. Repository instructions, set once and applied every session, handle recurring preferences. For example: “use table-driven tests for Go.”

Atomic Tasks and the Human-Agent Division of Labor

▶ Watch (08:10)

Big issues produce large, hard-to-review PRs. Break them into pieces: separate issues for the edit button, database changes, API method, and metrics. That split keeps each PR reviewable and moving fast. Ellich draws a clear line on who handles what: engineers own ambiguity, business context, and cross-system reasoning. The agent handles repetitive execution and pattern expansion. Her daily flow holds one development task for herself and runs 3-4 Copilot PRs in parallel.

“but I can usually keep 3 to 4 Copilot Coding agent PR’s going at the same time.” — Brittany Ellich

Notable Quotes

debt features nearly always win. Brittany Ellich · ▶ 1:48

It’s your team that’s currently balancing and spinning all of these plates. Brittany Ellich · ▶ 3:31

but I can usually keep 3 to 4 Copilot Coding agent PR’s going at the same time. Brittany Ellich · ▶ 11:30

Key Takeaways

  • Tech debt backlogs snowball because feature work always takes scheduling priority over maintenance.
  • Assigning issues to Copilot Coding Agent takes seconds; a working PR appears in 8-10 minutes.
  • One engineer can run 3-4 concurrent Copilot PRs daily by writing atomic, context-rich issues.