Abstract
When developing software, it is vitally important to keep the level of technical debt down since, based on several studies, it has been well established that technical debt can lower the development productivity, decrease the developers' morale and compromise the overall quality of the software, among others. However, even if researchers and practitioners working in today's software development industry are quite familiar with the concept of technical debt and its related negative consequences, there has been no empirical research focusing specifically on how software managers actively communicate and manage the need to keep the level of technical debt as low as possible.
Highlights
When developing software, it is vitally important to keep the level of technical debt (TD) down since it is well established from several previous studies that TD can, for example, lower the development productivity [1], decrease the developers' morale [2], and compromise the overall software quality [3] and even lead to a crisis point when a huge, costly refactoring or a replacement of the whole software needs to be undertaken [4]
We study how software management influences how software practitioners work with TD, for example, by continuously encouraging and rewarding those who focus on TD remediation and limitation activities
Another TD management strategy we examine in this study is based on penalizations and forcing mechanisms
Summary
This study aims to understand how software companies give incentives to manage Technical Debt. This is done by exploring how companies encourage and reward practitioners for actively keeping the level of technical debt down and whether the companies use any forcing or penalizing initiatives when managing technical debt. Method: In a first step, this paper reports the results of both an online survey provided quantitative data from 258 participants and interviews with 32 software practitioners. This study set out to provide a detailed assessment of additional and in-depth analysis of Technical Debt management strategies based on an encouraging mindset and attitude from both managers and technical roles to understand how, when and by whom such strategy is adopted in practice
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