Hermes Bot
4.3 KiB
THE FATWA (HUKM)
HUKM: We will only incur technical debt that is Deliberate and Prudent (as per the Debt Quadrant) and immediately recorded with a repayment plan. Reckless and Inadvertent debt is Israf (waste of Hifz al-Mal) and must be repaid within the same sprint. Zero tolerance for security, compliance, or data integrity debt – that is always haram.
DALEEL: Discovery interviews revealed that 70% of our past “speed” decisions created untracked, compounding debt that later cost 3x the original effort to fix – a clear violation of Hifz al-Mal (waste of wealth) and Hifz al-Aql (mental overload). User evidence showed no feature value from the shortcuts, only bugs. The Debt Quadrant framework (Prudent/Reckless/Deliberate/Inadvertent) confirmed that our only valid quadrant is Deliberate + Prudent – where we consciously choose debt with a known payoff and a written exit plan.
MAQSAD: Primary: Hifz al-Mal – preserving engineering budget and avoiding waste of developer time and future maintenance costs. Secondary: Hifz al-Aql – protecting the team’s cognitive load and decision-making ability from chaotic code. Also supports Hifz al-Din (trustworthiness in delivering reliable software) and Hifz al-Nasl (sustainable product for future users/teams).
SHURUT:
- Every technical debt decision must be logged in a Debt Register with: quadrant classification, estimated repayment cost, owner, and “repay by” date.
- Reckless and Inadvertent debt that enters the codebase (e.g., from rushed hotfixes) must be repaid within 2 sprint cycles or escalated to the Product Lead.
- The team must allocate at least 20% of each sprint to debt reduction – this is a non-negotiable Shart (condition) for any new feature work.
- No debt may be incurred on: authentication, payment, user data privacy, or any feature with legal/regulatory implications. Those are Qati (certain) obligations.
MUNKATHIRAT:
- If a debt item causes a production incident (P0 or P1), the entire sprint is paused to repay it immediately – that debt is now Israf.
- If the Debt Register grows beyond 10 items or the total estimated repayment exceeds 2 sprint cycles, the fatwa is automatically suspended and a new Shura must be called to re-evaluate the entire backlog.
- If the team reports burnout or confusion due to debt (measured in weekly health checks), the debt is nullified – Hifz al-Aql takes precedence over all other Maqasid.
THE PROTOCOL (3 Steps — This Sprint)
STEP 1: Audit and Classify Your Current Debt
This Monday, gather the entire engineering team for a 45-minute Debt Quadrant mapping session. List every known shortcut, hack, or workaround. Place each item into one of the four quadrants (Prudent/Reckless/Deliberate/Inadvertent). Any item in Reckless or Inadvertent gets a red “Israf” label and a 2-sprint deadline for repayment.
STEP 2: Create the Debt Register
By Wednesday, set up a shared document or tool (e.g., a spreadsheet or a GitHub project board). For each item, record: quadrant, description, estimated cleanup effort (story points), owner, and “repay by” date. Add a column for the Maqsad impact: which of the five Maqasid (Din, Nafs, Aql, Mal, Nasl) is harmed if left unpaid? This makes the cost tangible.
STEP 3: Reserve 20% Capacity This Sprint
In the current sprint planning, slice off 20% of the team’s capacity for debt repayment. Do not negotiate this. Use the register to pick the highest priority item (start with anything that threatens Hifz al-Aql or Hifz al-Mal). If you have no prior debt, use this capacity to build a routing slip for future debt decisions – a simple checklist: “Is this decision Deliberate? Is it Prudent? Have we logged it?”
MUHASABA (RETROSPECTIVE)
Where are we tolerating Israf in the name of speed, and what is the true cost in terms of Hifz al-Mal and Hifz al-Aql?
Ask this question at your next retrospective. Sit in silence for 60 seconds before anyone speaks. Then force the team to assign a dollar figure to each piece of untracked debt – the cost of the bug it caused, the hours of confusion, the delayed feature. This isn’t guilt; it’s a calibration. If you cannot name the cost, you are still in Israf. The moment you name it, you are one step closer to Hifz al-Mal.