What is social debt in software engineering?

“Social debt” in software engineering informally refers to unforeseen project cost connected to a “suboptimal” development community. The causes of suboptimal development communities can be many, ranging from global distance to organisational barriers to wrong or uninformed socio-technical decisions (i.e., decisions that influence both social and technical aspects of software development). Much like technical debt, social debt impacts heavily on software development success. We argue that, to ensure quality software engineering, practitioners should be provided with mechanisms to detect and manage the social debt connected to their development communities. This paper defines and elaborates on social debt, pointing out relevant research paths. We illustrate social debt by comparison with technical debt and discuss common real-life scenarios that exhibit “sub-optimal” development communities.