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Choose Refactor or Ship Features

MediumExecution00:00
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Your question is Choose Refactor or Ship Features. Take a moment with it on the right.

Talk me through your thinking if you like. When you're confident, submit your answer and I'll grade it like a real screen (7/10 or better passes).

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Problem

Scenario

You are the engineering manager for a product team at a B2B SaaS platform. The team owns a core workflow that is growing quickly, but the codebase has accumulated technical debt and the next two quarters include several revenue-linked feature requests. Leadership wants faster delivery, while engineers are warning that the current architecture is slowing the team down and increasing defect risk.

Question

How do you decide whether the team should invest in refactoring versus shipping new features?