Towards the development of an adaptive model for managing social debt in distributed agile software development environments

• Eydy del C. Suarez Brieva UNICESAR

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5753/cibse.2025.35307

Abstract

The misalignment of socio-technical congruence in software development teams—understood as the disconnect between social and technical factors—can lead to suboptimal decisions and unforeseen costs, giving rise to the concept of social debt. Through a systematic literature review, various solutions for detecting social debt have been identified; however, these approaches operate in isolation. Therefore, this study proposes the development of an adaptive model to manage social debt in distributed agile teams, integrating its causes, effects, and mitigation strategies. The model is grounded in an Action Research approach structured into four iterative cycles.

Keywords: Causes, Sociotechnical Congruence, Communication, Coordination, Cooperation, Social Debt, Action Research, Adaptive Model, Ontology

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