Tracking technical debt — An exploratory case study

Author

Guo, Yuepu ; Seaman, Carolyn ; Gomes, Rebeka ; Cavalcanti, Antonio ; Tonin, Graziela ; Silva, Fabio Q B Da ; Santos, André L M ; Siebra, Clauirton

Author_Institution

Dept. of Inf. Syst., Univ. of Maryland Baltimore County, Baltimore, MD, USA

fYear

2011

fDate

25-30 Sept. 2011

Firstpage

528

Lastpage

531

Abstract

The technical debt metaphor is increasingly being used to describe the effect of delaying certain software maintenance tasks on software projects. Practitioners understand intuitively how technical debt can turn into a serious problem if it is left unattended. However, it remains unknown how serious the problem is and whether explicit measurement and management of technical debt is useful. In this paper, we explore the effect of technical debt by tracking a single delayed maintenance task in a real software project throughout its lifecycle and simulate how explicit technical debt management might have changed project outcomes. The results from this study demonstrate how and to what extent technical debt affects software projects. The study also sheds light on the research methodologies that can be used to investigate the technical debt management problem.

Keywords

financial management; project management; software maintenance; software management; project outcomes; software maintenance task; software projects; technical debt management; technical debt metaphor; technical debt tracking; Decision making; Delay; Maintenance engineering; Protocols; Software maintenance; Switches; decision making; software maintenance; technical debt;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Software Maintenance (ICSM), 2011 27th IEEE International Conference on

Conference_Location

Williamsburg, VI

ISSN

1063-6773

Print_ISBN

978-1-4577-0663-9

Electronic_ISBN

1063-6773

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ICSM.2011.6080824

Filename

6080824