Prevalence, common causes and effects of technical debt: Results from a family of surveys with the IT industry

The negative implications of technical debt on software startups

“…Most of our identified TD effects were found by previous studies [3], [6], [18]. First, the TD effects Extra time to perform maintenance and Evolution restriction are found in the TD literature [5], [9], and software startup literature [3], [18].…”

“…The main effect is on internal software quality, primarily maintainability and evolvability. Accumulating TD increases code complexity and fragility, which can increase maintenance cost [6], [7]. Although TD directly impacts internal software quality, it has indirect impacts on other aspects of the business.…”

“…Previous studies investigated TD effects in diverse organizational context. Some of the TD effects are delaying the delivery of new releases [5], [6], increasing maintenance effort [5], [6], [7], [8], and deteriorating the team productivity and morale [9], [10]. Sometimes these negative impacts are exacerbated and lead to customer dissatisfaction [5], [11].…”

An Initial Theory to Understand and Manage Requirements Engineering Debt in Practice

“…On the other hand, inadequate, non-existing or outdated documentation, identified by Rios et al [10], directly supports the P11. However, incompleteness of requirements, or documentation of any kind, is not among the top 10 effects of TD in general, whereas the low external quality occupies the fourth place [29]. This shows a misalignment between the top-ranked effects of TD in general and the RED symptoms.…”

“…Time-related causes, conceptualized as deadline, are also identified as the top-ranked cause for documentation and requirements type of debt in related studies [10,12]. Moreover, an impending deadline is perceived as the most common cause of TD in general [29], indicating that the significance of deadline is also applicable in the RED domain.…”