The Third Way of DevOps, "continuous experimentation and learning," directly addresses technical debt by fostering a culture of constant improvement. This principle advocates for institutionalizing improvement by dedicating specific time and resources to activities outside of feature development. This includes refactoring code, improving tooling, and explicitly "paying down" technical debt. By allocating time for these activities (e.g., through "improvement blitzes" or dedicating a percentage of each sprint), organizations proactively manage and reduce the negative long-term effects of technical debt, leading to a more resilient and maintainable system.

A. feedback: The Second Way (feedback) makes the symptoms of technical debt visible (e.g., bugs, system failures), but it is the Third Way that provides the cultural framework and time to fix the underlying cause.

B. flow: The First Way (flow) focuses on accelerating work through the value stream. While technical debt can impede flow, this principle's primary concern is optimizing the workflow, not addressing the debt itself.

D. continuous experimentation: This is an incomplete description of the Third Way. The "learning" component is critical, as it ensures that lessons from experiments and addressing problems like technical debt are integrated into future work.

1. Juniper Networks Education Services. (2020). Junos Automation and DevOps (JAUTOD) R3.0 Student Guide. In the module "DevOps and Automation Concepts

" the guide explains the Third Way: "This culture of learning is reinforced by dedicating time for improvement

such as holding internal conferences or creating time to pay down technical debt." This directly links the Third Way to the practice of addressing technical debt.

2. Kim

G.

Humble

J.

Debois

P.

& Willis

J. (2016). The DevOps Handbook: How to Create World-Class Agility

Reliability

& Security in Technology Organizations. IT Revolution Press. In Chapter 6

"The Third Way: The Principles of Continual Learning and Experimentation

" the authors state

"By dedicating time to paying down technical debt

we are continually elevating the quality of our services

which is necessary for the fast flow of work." (p. 81).