skip to main content
10.1145/3555228.3555237acmotherconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagessbesConference Proceedingsconference-collections
research-article

Perceptions of Technical Debt and its Management Activities - A Survey of Software Practitioners

Published: 05 October 2022 Publication History

Abstract

Technical Debt (TD) is a metaphor reflecting technical compromises that can yield short-term benefits but might hurt the long-term health of a software system. Although several research efforts have been carried out, TD-related literature indicates that Technical Debt Management (TDM) is still incipient. Particularly in software organizations, there is still a lack of knowledge regarding how practitioners perceive TD and perform TDM in their projects. Our research focuses on characterizing TD and its management under the perspective of practitioners. For doing so, we conducted an online survey with 120 participants from 86 different organizations located in 5 different countries. Our results indicate that TD conception is widespread among more than 70% of respondents. Most of them (72%) recognized its importance and impact on software artifacts, being able to provide a valid example of three different TD Types (i.e., Design, Code, and Architectural). In addition, at least 65% of respondents consider TD identification, TD Repayment, and TD prevention as TDM activities in the spotlight. However, less than 15% adopt formal approaches to support these activities. This paper contributes to TD discussion and TDM activities by showing the practitioner’s perspective. Finally, further research will support observing how effective and efficient TDM activities can be in different contexts.

Supplementary Material

Original research forms and survey responses in Portuguese and English (p220-albuquerque-supplements.zip)

References

[1]
Nicolli SR Alves, Thiago S Mendes, Manoel G de Mendonça, Rodrigo O Spínola, Forrest Shull, and Carolyn Seaman. 2016. Identification and management of technical debt: A systematic mapping study. Information and Software Technology 70 (2016), 100–121.
[2]
Areti Ampatzoglou, Apostolos Ampatzoglou, Alexander Chatzigeorgiou, Paris Avgeriou, Pekka Abrahamsson, Antonio Martini, Uwe Zdun, and Kari Systa. 2016. The perception of technical debt in the embedded systems domain: an industrial case study. In 2016 IEEE 8th International Workshop on Managing Technical Debt (MTD). IEEE, 9–16.
[3]
Paris Avgeriou, Philippe Kruchten, Ipek Ozkaya, and Carolyn Seaman. 2016. Managing technical debt in software engineering (dagstuhl seminar 16162). In Dagstuhl Reports. Schloss Dagstuhl-Leibniz-Zentrum fuer Informatik.
[4]
Woubshet Nema Behutiye, Pilar Rodríguez, Markku Oivo, and Ayşe Tosun. 2017. Analyzing the concept of technical debt in the context of agile software development: A systematic literature review. Information and Software Technology 82 (2017), 139–158.
[5]
Ward Cunningham. 1992. The WyCash portfolio management system. ACM SIGPLAN OOPS Messenger 4, 2 (1992), 29–30.
[6]
Neil A Ernst, Stephany Bellomo, Ipek Ozkaya, Robert L Nord, and Ian Gorton. 2015. Measure it? manage it? ignore it? software practitioners and technical debt. In Proceedings of the 2015 10th Joint Meeting on Foundations of Software Engineering. 50–60.
[7]
Yuepu Guo, Rodrigo Oliveira Spínola, and Carolyn Seaman. 2016. Exploring the costs of technical debt management–a case study. Empirical Software Engineering 21, 1 (2016), 159–182.
[8]
Johannes Holvitie, Sherlock A Licorish, Rodrigo O Spínola, Sami Hyrynsalmi, Stephen G MacDonell, Thiago S Mendes, Jim Buchan, and Ville Leppänen. 2018. Technical debt and agile software development practices and processes: An industry practitioner survey. Information and Software Technology 96 (2018), 141–160.
[9]
Barbara A Kitchenham and Shari Lawrence Pfleeger. 2002. Principles of survey research part 2: designing a survey. ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes 27, 1 (2002), 18–20.
[10]
Philippe Kruchten, Robert L Nord, and Ipek Ozkaya. 2012. Technical debt: From metaphor to theory and practice. Ieee software 29, 6 (2012), 18–21.
[11]
Zengyang Li, Paris Avgeriou, and Peng Liang. 2015. A systematic mapping study on technical debt and its management. Journal of Systems and Software 101 (2015), 193–220.
[12]
Johan Linåker, Sardar Muhammad Sulaman, Rafael Maiani de Mello, and Martin Höst. 2015. Guidelines for conducting surveys in software engineering. (2015).
[13]
Vladimir Mandić, Nebojša Taušan, and Robert Ramač. 2020. The prevalence of the technical debt concept in serbian it industry: Results of a national-wide survey. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Technical Debt. 77–86.
[14]
Antonio Martini, Terese Besker, and Jan Bosch. 2018. Technical Debt tracking: Current state of practice: A survey and multiple case study in 15 large organizations. Science of Computer Programming 163 (2018), 42–61.
[15]
Antonio Martini and Jan Bosch. 2015. Towards prioritizing Architecture Technical Debt: information needs of architects and product owners. In 2015 41St euromicro conference on software engineering and advanced applications. IEEE, 422–429.
[16]
Boris Pérez, Camilo Castellanos, Darío Correal, Nicolli Rios, Sávio Freire, Rodrigo Spínola, and Carolyn Seaman. 2020. What are the practices used by software practitioners on technical debt payment: results from an international family of surveys. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Technical Debt. 103–112.
[17]
Shari Lawrence Pfleeger and Barbara A Kitchenham. 2001. Principles of survey research: part 1: turning lemons into lemonade. ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes 26, 6 (2001), 16–18.
[18]
Nicolli Rios, Manoel G Mendonça, Carolyn Seaman, and Rodrigo O Spínola. 2019. Causes and effects of the presence of technical debt in agile software projects. (2019).
[19]
Junior Cesar Rocha, Vanius Zapalowski, and Ingrid Nunes. 2017. Understanding technical debt at the code level from the perspective of software developers. In Proceedings of the 31st Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering. 64–73.
[20]
Victor Machado Silva, Helvio Jeronimo Junior, and Guilherme Horta Travassos. 2019. A taste of the software industry perception of technical debt and its management in Brazil. Journal of Software Engineering Research and Development 7 (2019), 1–1.
[21]
FluidSurveys Team. 3. Types of Survey Research, When to Use Them, and How they Can Benefit Your Organization. Retrieved December 15(3), 2017.
[22]
Claes Wohlin, Per Runeson, Martin Höst, Magnus C Ohlsson, Björn Regnell, and Anders Wesslén. 2012. Experimentation in software engineering. Springer Science & Business Media.
[23]
Jesse Yli-Huumo, Andrey Maglyas, and Kari Smolander. 2016. How do software development teams manage technical debt?–An empirical study. Journal of Systems and Software 120 (2016), 195–218.

Cited By

View all
  • (2024)A Catalog of Prevention Strategies for Test Technical DebtProceedings of the XXIII Brazilian Symposium on Software Quality10.1145/3701625.3701692(706-717)Online publication date: 5-Nov-2024
  • (2023)Technical Debt in Brazilian Software Startups: Perceptions of Professionals in ParanáProceedings of the XXII Brazilian Symposium on Software Quality10.1145/3629479.3629482(120-127)Online publication date: 6-Dec-2023
  • (2023)Business-driven technical debt management using Continuous Debt Valuation Approach (CoDVA)Information and Software Technology10.1016/j.infsof.2023.107333164:COnline publication date: 1-Dec-2023

Index Terms

  1. Perceptions of Technical Debt and its Management Activities - A Survey of Software Practitioners

    Recommendations

    Comments

    Information & Contributors

    Information

    Published In

    cover image ACM Other conferences
    SBES '22: Proceedings of the XXXVI Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering
    October 2022
    457 pages
    ISBN:9781450397353
    DOI:10.1145/3555228
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

    Publisher

    Association for Computing Machinery

    New York, NY, United States

    Publication History

    Published: 05 October 2022

    Permissions

    Request permissions for this article.

    Check for updates

    Author Tags

    1. Empirical Study
    2. Survey
    3. Technical Debt
    4. Technical Debt Management

    Qualifiers

    • Research-article
    • Research
    • Refereed limited

    Conference

    SBES 2022
    SBES 2022: XXXVI Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering
    October 5 - 7, 2022
    Virtual Event, Brazil

    Acceptance Rates

    Overall Acceptance Rate 147 of 427 submissions, 34%

    Contributors

    Other Metrics

    Bibliometrics & Citations

    Bibliometrics

    Article Metrics

    • Downloads (Last 12 months)16
    • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)1
    Reflects downloads up to 15 Feb 2025

    Other Metrics

    Citations

    Cited By

    View all
    • (2024)A Catalog of Prevention Strategies for Test Technical DebtProceedings of the XXIII Brazilian Symposium on Software Quality10.1145/3701625.3701692(706-717)Online publication date: 5-Nov-2024
    • (2023)Technical Debt in Brazilian Software Startups: Perceptions of Professionals in ParanáProceedings of the XXII Brazilian Symposium on Software Quality10.1145/3629479.3629482(120-127)Online publication date: 6-Dec-2023
    • (2023)Business-driven technical debt management using Continuous Debt Valuation Approach (CoDVA)Information and Software Technology10.1016/j.infsof.2023.107333164:COnline publication date: 1-Dec-2023

    View Options

    Login options

    View options

    PDF

    View or Download as a PDF file.

    PDF

    eReader

    View online with eReader.

    eReader

    HTML Format

    View this article in HTML Format.

    HTML Format

    Figures

    Tables

    Media

    Share

    Share

    Share this Publication link

    Share on social media