Deliberative Technical Debt Management: An Action Research Study

Technical Debt (TD) has seen a growing interest from software companies and researchers since the term was first established almost 30 years ago. TD refers to concessions made for short-term advantages or conveniences, which may result in long-term difficulties. Numerous TD management strategies have been proposed to avoid the severe consequences of leaving TD unchecked. However, these strategies often suffer from being too abstract, making it difficult to initiate TD deliberations. To investigate how software development companies can initiate such deliberations, we conducted an Action Research study in collaboration with a Danish software development department, SoftShelf. Through two Action Research interventions at SoftShelf, we introduced strategies and tools for TD management and reified them to their situation in order to initiate deliberations on the matter. After reporting the interventions' practical consequences in SoftShelf, we discuss the usefulness of deliberation theory in TD management research and practice.