Abstract
There are many definitions of software Technical Debt (TD) that were proposed over time. While many techniques to measure TD emerged in recent times, there is still not a clear understanding about how different techniques compare when applied to software projects. The goal of this paper is to shed some light on this aspect, by comparing three techniques about TD identification that were proposed over time: (i) the Maintainability Index (MI), (ii) SIG TD models, and (iii) SQALE analysis. Considering 20 open source Python libraries, we compare the TD measurements time series in terms of trends and evolution according to different sets of releases (major, minor, and micro), to see if the perception of practitioners about TD evolution could be impacted. While all methods report generally growing trends of TD over time, there are different patterns. SQALE reports more periods of steady states compared to MI and SIG TD. MI is the method that reports more repayments of TD compared to the other methods. SIG TD and MI are the models that show more similarity in the way TD evolves, while SQALE and MI are less similar. The implications are that each method gives slightly a different perception about TD evolution.
Highlights
Technical Debt (TD) is a metaphor introduced by Ward Cunningham in 1993 [1]
E goal of the paper is to compare three main techniques about TD identification that were proposed over time for source code TD identification: (i) the Maintainability Index (MI) (1994) which was one of the first attempts to measure TD and is still in use, (ii) Software Improvement Group (SIG) TD models (2011) which were defined in search of proper code metrics for TD measurement, and (iii) Software QuALity Enhancement (SQALE) (2011) is a framework that attempts to put into more practical terms the indication from the ISO/IEC 9126 software quality standard
We focus on three alternative methods that were used over time for TD identification: (i) the Maintainability Index (MI), (ii) SIG TD models, and (iii) SQALE analysis
Summary
Cunningham compared poor decisions and shortcuts taken during software development to economic debt. E second law states that “as a system evolves, its complexity increases unless work is done to maintain or reduce it.” Even though this metaphor was coined more than two decades ago (and almost 40 years passed since the definition of the software laws), the significance of this topic in the academic sphere can be observed only in the last eight years, when the number of studies has risen significantly [3]. To this day, there is still no clear definition of what exactly can be considered as TD.
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