Technical Debt Prioritization: A Developer's Perspective

dc.contributor.authorPina, Diogo
dc.contributor.authorSeaman, Carolyn
dc.contributor.authorGoldman, Alfredo
dc.date.accessioned2022-07-19T20:44:38Z
dc.date.available2022-07-19T20:44:38Z
dc.date.issued2022-06-27
dc.descriptionProceedings of TechDebt ’22: International Conference on Technical Debt 2022 (TechDebt ’22). ACM, New York, NY, USAen_US
dc.description.abstractBackground: The prioritization of technical debt is an essen-tial task in managing software projects because, with current analysis tools, it is possible to find thousands of technical debt items in the software that would take months or even years to be fully paid. Aims: In this study, we aim to under-stand which criteria software developers use to prioritize code technical debt in real software projects. Methods: We performed a survey to collect data from open-source soft-ware projects in order to reach a large and diverse set of ex-periences. We analyzed the data using Straussian Grounded Theory techniques: open coding, axial coding, and selective coding. Results: We grouped the criteria into 15 categories and divided them into 2 super-categories related to paying off the technical debt and 3 related to not paying it. Conclusions: When participants decided to pay off technical debt, they wanted to do it soon. However, when they decided not to pay it, it is often because the debt occurred intentionally due to a project decision. Also, participants using similar criteria for their decisions tended to choose similar priority levels for those decisions. Finally, we observed that each software project needs to tailor the rules used to identify code technical debt to their project context.en_US
dc.description.sponsorshipThis study was financed in part by the Coordenacao de Aperfeicoamento de Pessoal de Nivel Superior – Brasil (CAPES) – Finance Code 001.en_US
dc.description.urihttps://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9804474en_US
dc.format.extent10 pagesen_US
dc.genreconference papers and proceedingsen_US
dc.genrepreprintsen_US
dc.identifierdoi:10.13016/m2xyan-kxdo
dc.identifier.citationD. Pina, C. Seaman and A. Goldman, "Technical Debt Prioritization: A Developer's Perspective," 2022 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Technical Debt (TechDebt), 2022, pp. 46-55, doi: 10.1145/3524843.3528096.en_US
dc.identifier.urihttps://doi.org/10.1145/3524843.3528096
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/11603/25201
dc.language.isoen_USen_US
dc.publisherIEEEen_US
dc.relation.isAvailableAtThe University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC)
dc.relation.ispartofUMBC Information Systems Department Collection
dc.relation.ispartofUMBC Faculty Collection
dc.rights© 2022 IEEE.  Personal use of this material is permitted.  Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.en_US
dc.titleTechnical Debt Prioritization: A Developer's Perspectiveen_US
dc.typeTexten_US
dcterms.creatorhttps://orcid.org/0000-0001-6588-9830en_US

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