Exploring the costs of technical debt management – a case study

被引：0
作者：
Yuepu Guo
Rodrigo Oliveira Spínola
Carolyn Seaman
机构：
[1] University of Maryland Baltimore County,Department of Information Systems
[2] University of Salvador,Department of Systems and Computing
[3] Fraunhofer Project Center for Software and System Engineering at Federal University of Bahia,undefined
来源：
Empirical Software Engineering | 2016年 / 21卷
关键词：
Technical debt; Decision making; Cost; Case study;
D O I：
暂无
中图分类号：
学科分类号：
摘要：
Technical debt is a metaphor for delayed software maintenance tasks. Incurring technical debt may bring short-term benefits to a project, but such benefits are often achieved at the cost of extra work in future, analogous to paying interest on the debt. Currently technical debt is managed implicitly, if at all. However, on large systems, it is too easy to lose track of delayed tasks or to misunderstand their impact. Therefore, we have proposed a new approach to managing technical debt, which we believe to be helpful for software managers to make informed decisions. In this study we explored the costs of the new approach by tracking the technical debt management activities in an on-going software project. The results from the study provided insights into the impact of technical debt management on software projects. In particular, we found that there is a significant start-up cost when beginning to track and monitor technical debt, but the cost of ongoing management soon declines to very reasonable levels.
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页码：159 / 182
页数：23
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