ITIL4-CDS Create, Deliver and Support Practice Question
Which approach is most effective for managing 'Technical Debt' in an agile development environment?
⚠ Common exam trap
Students often believe technical debt should be completely ignored until a dedicated refactoring project is funded, rather than managing it iteratively.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Include technical debt remediation in the product backlog.
Technical debt is an inevitable byproduct of rapid development. The key is to manage it transparently by tracking it and allocating resources to address it alongside new feature development. ITIL 4 CDS encourages balancing new value creation with the maintenance of existing service health. By treating debt as a managed risk rather than ignoring it, organizations prevent it from overwhelming their ability to innovate and deliver long-term value.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Ignore technical debt until it causes a production incident.
Why it's wrong here
Ignoring debt until it causes an incident is a reactive and risky strategy. This leads to unplanned work, downtime, and developer frustration, ultimately increasing the cost of fixing the issues later. Proactive management of technical debt is essential for maintaining the long-term stability and velocity of the development team.
- ✓
Include technical debt remediation in the product backlog.
Why this is correct
Including debt in the backlog ensures it is visible and prioritized. By allocating a percentage of capacity to address it, teams keep the codebase healthy without stalling feature development. This balanced approach is crucial for sustainable development and ensures that the system remains maintainable and reliable over the long term.
- ✗
Require 100% test coverage before any code is pushed.
Why it's wrong here
While test coverage is good, requiring 100% coverage is often unrealistic and can lead to developers writing superficial tests just to meet the metric. It does not address the underlying architectural debt and can slow down delivery velocity significantly, which is not the optimal way to manage debt.
- ✗
Stop all feature development until all debt is cleared.
Why it's wrong here
Halting feature development is usually not feasible from a business perspective. Most organizations need to deliver value continuously. Instead of a total freeze, the focus should be on incremental management of debt, balancing improvement efforts with the ongoing need to provide new capabilities to the users and stakeholders.
About these practice questions
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JA
Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official PeopleCert/AXELOS exam blueprint
This ITIL4-CDS practice question is part of Courseiva's free PeopleCert/AXELOS certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the ITIL4-CDS exam.