A Taste of the Software Industry Perception of Technical Debt and its Management in Brazil

Abstract

Technical debt (TD) is receiving more and more attention to software engineering. Although it was initially used as a communication tool for technical and non-technical stakeholders, nowadays this concept supports the improvement of the software’s internal quality. Despite the increasing number of studies regarding TD and its management, only a few are concerned with the industry. Therefore, this primary study aims to characterize TD and its management under the perspective of Brazilian software organizations using their practitioners as proxies. A survey was performed with 62 practitioners, representing around 12 organizations and 30 software projects. The analysis of 40 valid questionnaires indicates that TD is still unknown to a considerable fraction of the participants, and only a small group of organizations adopt TD management activities in their projects. The survey package is available and can be used to support further investigations on TD management in software organizations.

On technical debt in mathematical programming: An exploratory study

“…Several authors investigated the differences across different types of TD [11,33,54,70,74,75], even demonstrating that scientific software may have either different frequencies and also exclusive types [19,52]. However, to narrow the scope of the project (and to limit the survey length to a 'participant-friendly' timespan), we selected three types only-Code, Documentation and Versioning Debt.…”

“…Code Debt (poorly written code that violates best coding practices or rules), has been demonstrated to be the most commonly admitted by developers [7,22,75,89], and one of the most researched [33,54,70]. Documentation Debt (insufficient, incomplete or outdated documentation) has reportedly been considered the most impactful and interesting for scientific software reviewers [19] given its influence on software reuse and replicability [71].…”

“…TD gained relevance among the SE community [54], as scrutiny of systems' quality has become more pronounced [3]. They have approached specific procedures to handle it in software factories [57,71], how it affects (and is affected by) agile practices [33,43], how developers approach it [19,28,75] what are the "common beliefs" about it [11], and how developers' attitudes increase or decrease its existence [3,20].…”

“…This study aims to address this gap by providing a first exploratory study of TD in MP. We focused on three specific TD types: Code (the most commonly admitted by developers [7,22,75,89], and one of the most researched [33,54]), Documentation (the most impactful and interesting for scientific software reviewers [19]), and Versioning (given the relevance of versioning for open-science and handling TD [15,56]). To do this, we conducted an online, anonymous survey with well-established OR academics and practitioners, and gathered 168 full responses regarding self-reported practices that may favour (or control) TD.…”

Startups Transitioning from Early to Growth Phase - A Pilot Study of Technical Debt Perception

“…Facing Technical Debt 1 (TD) is becoming even more of an urgent need for many software startups [4,10,28]. Empirical evidence on how TD is perceived from software startups when transitioning from early to growth phases is still meager [1,4,18,19,26]. There is a need for empirical evidence [29].…”