Investigating the Relationship between Technical Debt Management and Software Development Issues

Authors

  • Clara Berenguer Salvador University
  • Adriano Borges Salvador University
  • Sávio Freire Federal Institute of Ceará and Federal University of Bahia
  • Nicolli Rios Federal University of Rio de Janeiro
  • Robert Ramač University of Novi Sad
  • Nebojša Taušan University of Novi Sad
  • Boris Pérez Francisco de Paula Santander University
  • Camilo Castellanos University of Los Andes
  • Darío Correal University of Los Andes
  • Alexia Pacheco University of Costa Rica
  • Gustavo López University of Costa Rica
  • Manoel Mendonça Federal University of Bahia
  • Davide Falessi University of Rome Tor Vergata
  • Carolyn Seaman University of Maryland Baltimore County
  • Vladimir Mandić University of Novi Sad
  • Clemente Izurieta Montana State University and Idaho National Laboratories
  • Rodrigo Spínola Virginia Commonwealth University and Salvador University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5753/jserd.2023.2581

Keywords:

Technical Debt, Technical Debt Management, Causes of Technical Debt, Effects of Technical Debt, Process Model

Abstract

Context: The presence of technical debt (TD) brings risks to software projects. Managers must continuously find a cost-benefit balance between the benefits of incurring in TD and the costs of its presence in a software project. Much attention has been given to TD related to coding issues, but other types of debt can also have impactful consequences on projects. Aims: This paper seeks to elaborate on the growing need to expand TD research to other areas of software development, by analyzing six elements related to TD management, namely: causes, effects, preventive practices, reasons for non-prevention, repayment practices, and reasons for non-repayment of TD. Method: We survey and analyze, quantitatively and qualitatively, the answers of 653 software industry practitioners on TD to investigate how the previously mentioned elements are related to coding and non-coding issues of the software development process. Results: Coding issues are commonly related to the investigated elements but, indeed, they are only part of the TD Management stage. Issues related to the project planning and management, human factors, knowledge, quality, process, requirements, verification, validation, and test, design, architecture, and the organization are also common sources of TD. We organize the results in a hump diagram and specialize it considering the point of view of practitioners that have used agile, hybrid, and traditional process models in their projects. Conclusion: The hump diagram, in combination with the detailed results, provides guidance on what to expect from the presence of TD and how to react to it considering several issues of software development. The results shed light on TD management of software elements, beyond source code related artifacts.

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Author Biography

Sávio Freire, Federal Institute of Ceará and Federal University of Bahia

Sávio Freire is a PhD student at the Federal University of Bahia and an Assistant Professor at the Federal Institute of Ceará. He is a member of the Technical Debt Research Team at Salvador University. He holds a MS degree in Computer Science from the State University of Ceará. His research interest encompasses technical debt and empirical software engineering.

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Published

2023-02-03

How to Cite

Berenguer, C., Borges, A., Freire, S., Rios, N., Ramač, R., Taušan, N., Pérez, B., Castellanos, C., Correal, D., Pacheco, A., López, G., Mendonça, M., Falessi, D., Seaman, C., Mandić, V., Izurieta, C., & Spínola, R. (2023). Investigating the Relationship between Technical Debt Management and Software Development Issues. Journal of Software Engineering Research and Development, 11(1), 3:1 – 3:21. https://doi.org/10.5753/jserd.2023.2581

Issue

Vol. 11 No. 1 (2023)

Section

Research Article

License

Copyright (c) 2023 Clara Berenguer, Adriano Borges, Sávio Freire, Nicolli Rios, Robert Ramač, Nebojša Taušan, Boris Pérez, Camilo Castellanos, Darío Correal, Alexia Pacheco, Gustavo López, Manoel Mendonça, Davide Falessi, Carolyn Seaman, Vladimir Mandić, Clemente Izurieta, Rodrigo Spínola

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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