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The practitioners’ point of view on the concept of technical debt and its causes and consequences: a design for a global family of industrial surveys and its first results from Brazil

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Abstract

Context

Studying the causes of technical debt (TD) could aid in TD prevention, thus easing the job of TD management. On the other hand, better understanding of the effects of TD could also aid in TD management by facilitating more informed decisions about incurring and paying off debt.

Objective

Create a deeper understanding, and confirming existing evidence, of the causes and effects of TD by collecting new evidence from real-world TD examples.

Method

InsighTD is a globally distributed family of industrial surveys on the causes and effects of TD. It is designed to run as a large-scale study based on continuous and independent replications in different countries. The survey instrument asks practitioners to describe in detail a real example of TD from their experience. We present in this paper the design of InsighTD, which has the primary goal of replication at a large-scale, with the results of the study in Brazil as a small part of the larger puzzle.

Results

The first iteration of the InsighTD survey, carried out in Brazil, yielded 107 responses. We identified a total of 78 causes and 66 effects, which confirm and also extend the current knowledge on causes and effects of TD. Then, we organized the identified set of causes and effects in probabilistic cause-effect diagrams. The proposed diagrams highlight the causes that can most contribute to the occurrence of TD as well as the most common effects that occur as a result of debt.

Conclusion

We intend to reduce the problem of isolated TD investigations that are not yet representative and build a continuous and generalizable empirical basis for understanding practical problems and challenges of TD.

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Notes

  1. Agile: a lightweight process that promotes iterative development, close collaboration between the development team and business side, constant communication, and tightly-knit teams (Beck et al. 2001; Alliance et al. 2016; Pressman and Maxim 2014).

  2. Hybrid: is the combination of agile methods with other non-agile techniques. For example, a detailed requirements effort, followed by sprints of incremental delivery (Alliance et al. 2016; Pressman and Maxim 2014).

  3. Traditional: conventional document-driven software development methods that can be characterized as extensive planning, standardization of development stages, formalized communication, significant documentation and design up front (Pressman and Maxim 2014).

  4. TD indicators allow the discovery of TD items when analyzing different software development artifacts. An TD indicator is sometimes a metric, or sometimes something less formal, that can be used to point to areas with specific types of debt (Alves et al. 2016).

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Acknowledgements

This work was partially supported by the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel - Brazil (Capes), under the Capes/IIASA Sandwich Doctoral Program, process n° 88881.189667 / 2018-01. This research was also supported in part by funds received from the David A. Wilson Award for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, which was created by the Laureate International Universities network to support research focused on teaching and learning. For more information on the award or Laureate, please visit www.laureate.net.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, Federal University of Bahia, Salvador, Brazil

    Nicolli Rios

  2. Graduate Program in Systems and Computer, Salvador University State University of Bahia, Salvador, Brazil

    Rodrigo Oliveira Spínola

  3. Department of Computer Science, Federal University of Bahia, Salvador, Brazil

    Manoel Mendonça

  4. Department of Information Systems, University of Maryland Baltimore County, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Carolyn Seaman

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  1. Nicolli Rios
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Correspondence to Nicolli Rios.

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Appendix

Appendix

Table 16 Identified causes X TD Types
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Table 17 Identified effects X TD Types
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Table 18 Comparison to related work on TD causes
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Table 19 Comparison to related work on effects of TD
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Rios, N., Spínola, R.O., Mendonça, M. et al. The practitioners’ point of view on the concept of technical debt and its causes and consequences: a design for a global family of industrial surveys and its first results from Brazil. Empir Software Eng 25, 3216–3287 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-020-09832-9

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