Investigate, Identify and Estimate the Technical Debt: A Systematic Mapping Study

Abstract

Context: Technical Debt (TD) is a metaphor that refers to short-term solutions in software development that may affect the cost to the software development life cycle. Objective: To explore and understand TDrelated to the software industry as well as an overview on the current state of TD research. Forty-three TD empirical studies were collected for classification and analyzation. Goals: Classify TD types, find the indicators used to detect TD, find the estimators used to quantify the TD, evaluate how researchers investigate TD. Method: By performing a systematic mapping study to identify and analyze the TD empirical studies which published between 2014 and 2017. Results: We present the most common indicators and evaluators to identify and evaluate the TD, and we gathered thirteen types of TD. We showed some ways to investigate the TD, and used tools in the selected studies. Conclusion: The outcome of our systematic mapping study can help researchers to identify interestand future in TD.