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.
Highlights
The software evolution is essential for the survival of a software product in the market since the environment in which it is immersed continually changes
This paper presented background about the Technical Debt (TD) definition and the results of a survey conducted with practitioners in Brazilian Software Organizations (BSOs)
The results provide initial observations regarding how BSOs perceive and manage TD in their projects
Summary
The software evolution is essential for the survival of a software product in the market since the environment in which it is immersed continually changes. As argued by Boehm (2008), in the face of an increasingly dynamic and competitive market, software development organizations need to support continuous and fast delivery of value to the customer in both short and long terms. In this scenario, many software organizations introduce agility practices into their development processes to handle the frequents requirements changes and the continuous delivery demand (de França et al 2016). Conclusions: the results provide an initial and representative landscape of the TDM scenario in BSOs, further research will support to observe how effective and efficient TDM activities can be in different software project contexts
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