ATDx: Building an Architectural Technical Debt Index

Abstract

Architectural technical debt (ATD) in software-intensive systems refers to the architecture design decisions which work as expedient in the short term, but later negatively impact system evolvability and maintainability. Over the years numerous approaches have been proposed to detect particular types of ATD at a refined level of granularity via source code analysis. Nevertheless, how to gain an encompassing overview of the ATD present in a software-intensive system is still an open question. In this study, we present a multi-step approach designed to build an ATD index (ATDx), which provides insights into a set of ATD dimensions building upon existing architectural rules by leveraging statistical analysis. The ATDx approach can be adopted by researchers and practitioners alike in order to gain a better understanding of the nature of the ATD present in software-intensive systems, and provides a systematic framework to implement concrete instances of ATDx according to specific project and organizational needs.

Architectural Technical Debt: A Grounded Theory

“…A research avenue we find particularly interesting exploring is the further study of ATD symptoms, with particular emphasis on quantifiable ones, in order to determine which symptoms are best suited as foundation for novel ATD identification and management techniques, e.g. by leveraging the method presented in [30].…”

Empirical evaluation of an architectural technical debt index in the context of the Apache and ONAP ecosystems

“…Consequently, this step consists of identifying the severity cluster of that contains similar values of other software projects within the portfolio. The usage of the CkMeans algorithm replaces the outlier-based calculation of ATD on which the original ATDx approach was based ( Verdecchia et al, 2020 ); this decision allows us to gain finer-grained results ( i.e., a discrete value between 0 and 5 instead of a boolean value).…”

“…In order to fill this gap, in this study we present an improved version of ATDx ( Verdecchia et al, 2020 ), an approach designed to provide data-driven, intuitive, and actionable insights on the ATD present in a software-intensive system. ATDx consists of a theoretical, multi-step, and semi-automated process, concisely entailing (i) the reuse of architectural rules supported by third-party analysis tools, (ii) the calculation of the severity of architectural rule violations based on the comparison of normalized values across a software portfolio, and (iii) the aggregation of analysis results into a set of customizable ATD dimensions.…”

“…This study builds upon the research in which ATDx was preliminarily reported ( Verdecchia et al, 2020 ) by (i) refining the ATDx in order to address some of its drawbacks (see ‘The ATDx Approach’), and (ii) conducting an empirical evaluation of the approach.…”

“…the evolution of ATDx , an approach providing a multi-level index of architectural technical debt; refined by replacing the outlier-based calculation of the original approach ( Verdecchia et al, 2020 ) with a severity clustering algorithm;…”