1. Measure the time engineers are spending. This doesn’t need to be super-precise, nor does it necessarily have to be wall-clock time (you can use story points, or ticket counts, or probably a dozen other things).

2. Split that time into “buckets” that map to the kinds of activities that influence output. I start with three buckets: features (time spent developing new things), debt (time spent fixing old problems), and toil (time spent on routine tasks).

3. Agree on the appropriate ratios for each bucket, and then adjust over time to influence the outputs you care about.