Costs and obstacles encountered in technical debt management – A case study

Abstract

Technical debt (TD) is a metaphor that characterizes the effect of immature software artifacts. The costs and benefits of TD, along with the uncertainty of its interest repayment, provide leverage for software managers, but also could lead to problems such as increased costs and lower quality during maintenance if it is left unattended. Therefore, effective approaches to TD management are needed by software practitioners. As one of our series of studies on TD management, this study was originally designed to reveal the cost side of explicit TD management. The study design required applying a simple proposed TD management approach to the subject project and then collecting cost information. Not surprisingly, we observed some deviation of the actual management process from our proposed one, which provided us with an opportunity to investigate the obstacles to explicitly managing TD. We also identified some costs and cost patterns related to TD management. Based on the insights gained from this study, we further propose strategies to overcome the obstacles and improve the application of TD management in practice.