Tech debt
You've likely heard technologists use the term "technical debt", but it's not clear exactly what it means or how you treat it. And it sounds really bad.
Intro
Splicing your business into clearly defined and accountable problem spaces is the best way to ensure you know who are responsible for exactly what.
As a leader of leaders you need to demand that your direct reports take responsibility for their whole problem space, and always hand out consequences when they dont.
It might be a good idea to have slightly overlapping problemspaces within a team, that way the members can take on tasks from eachother, they can be active advocates, and have constructive conflicts, to find the truth
The goal
The goal is to make the person setting the requirements, be the one responsible for the completion of it, make them accountable for it, and assign the consequences of it.
Case: Product teams
Alias for problem space here: Product
Within a product team for instance, the product lead needs to take full accountability and ownership over the whole product, the prioritized features and improvements.
The tech lead needs to take full responsibility for prioritizing the right technical debt, ensuring the technology moves in the right direction, and that the product is always able to continue to innovate into the far future.
Case: Platfom teams
Alias for problem space here: Domain
Platform teams might be organized around business domains or complicated subsystems (also a kind of domain), they still follow exactly the same rules of engagement as product teams. The product lead for the entire platform, should always own the consequences of the actions of even the sub-problem spaces within the domain teams, or the developers.