Investigating the Relationship between Technical Debt Management and Software Development Issues

Abstract

The presence of technical debt (TD) brings risks to softwareprojects. Managers mustcontinuously find a cost-benefit balance between the benefits of incurring in TDand the costsof its presencein a software project. Much attention has been given to TD related tocoding issues, butother types of debt can also have impactful consequences on projects.Aims: This paper seeksto elaborate on the growing need to expand TD research to other areas of software development, byanalyzingsix elements related to TDmanagement, 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 answersof 653 software industry practitionerson TD toinvestigatehowthe previously mentioned elements are related to coding and non-codingissues of the software development process.Results: Coding issuesare commonly related to the investigated elementsbut, indeed, they are only part of the TD Managementstage. 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 commonsources of TD.We organize the results ina hump diagramand 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, beyondsource coderelated artifacts.