1. A system to continuously update an urgency rating of a backlog item associated with a technical debt of a software development project, the technical debt representing potential additional work or rework associated with current code, the system comprising: a user interface configured to facilitate a user defining a plurality of components that comprise the software development project and a function to update the urgency rating based on a development event associated with a component among the plurality of components that is associated with the technical debt; and a processor configured to identify the development event and update the urgency rating based on the function, wherein the user interface facilitates the user initializing a state for each of the plurality of components and defining a second function for updating the state based on the development event and the function to update the urgency rating uses the output of the second function.