We all have these in our backlog. Let's stop calling them "engineering tickets." Categorize this work in terms of the value that it delivers to the customer. Avoid categorizing any tickets as “dev” or “engineering”. When you do, it makes it more challenging to find a place for them in a sprint, and even more challenging to back up your decision to other teams, leadership, and customers.

Identify why you need this work done:

• Is it to improve stability?
• Security?
• Performance?
• Dev team productivity so that they can be happier and build a better product?

It’ll be easier to justify to your stakeholders and your dev team will understand how their work aligns with the broader business goals and make them better partners.