Forgive me if I’m misreading your point, but I believe what you’re saying is that you believe you should be working with the Tech Lead and Iteration Manager (a title I’m not familiar with) to figure out what tech lead needs to be addressed. I fully agree with this point, and I believe you can do that while also addressing measurable user outcomes.

I’ll give an example. We’ve started to see the hallmarks of performance issues for one of the products I manage at Qventus. Additionally, there are a number of features that we’ve tried to develop that we’ve determined are blocked by some code rebasing that needs doing (classic tech debt problem). I’m currently working with the senior engineers on my team to define the scope of work necessary to address those issues.

It’s all about finding balance. If you spend all your time addressing tech debt, you’re missing out on the opportunity to build new functionality. Fix none of it and you’ll find yourself in a quagmire of recurring bugs and slow, frustrating development cycles.

I’d love to hear if you agree.