TY - GEN
T1 - Perceptions of Technical Debt and its Management Activities-A Survey of Software Practitioners
AU - Albuquerque, Danyllo
AU - Guimaraes, Everton Tavares
AU - Tonin, Graziela Simone
AU - Perkusich, Mirko Barbosa
AU - Almeida, Hyggo
AU - Perkusich, Angelo
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 ACM.
PY - 2022/10/5
Y1 - 2022/10/5
N2 - Technical Debt (TD) is a metaphor reflecting technical compromises that can yield short-term benefits but might hurt the long-term health of a software system. Although several research efforts have been carried out, TD-related literature indicates that Technical Debt Management (TDM) is still incipient. Particularly in software organizations, there is still a lack of knowledge regarding how practitioners perceive TD and perform TDM in their projects. Our research focuses on characterizing TD and its management under the perspective of practitioners. For doing so, we conducted an online survey with 120 participants from 86 different organizations located in 5 different countries. Our results indicate that TD conception is widespread among more than 70% of respondents. Most of them (72%) recognized its importance and impact on software artifacts, being able to provide a valid example of three different TD Types (i.e., Design, Code, and Architectural). In addition, at least 65% of respondents consider TD identification, TD Repayment, and TD prevention as TDM activities in the spotlight. However, less than 15% adopt formal approaches to support these activities. This paper contributes to TD discussion and TDM activities by showing the practitioner's perspective. Finally, further research will support observing how effective and efficient TDM activities can be in different contexts.
AB - Technical Debt (TD) is a metaphor reflecting technical compromises that can yield short-term benefits but might hurt the long-term health of a software system. Although several research efforts have been carried out, TD-related literature indicates that Technical Debt Management (TDM) is still incipient. Particularly in software organizations, there is still a lack of knowledge regarding how practitioners perceive TD and perform TDM in their projects. Our research focuses on characterizing TD and its management under the perspective of practitioners. For doing so, we conducted an online survey with 120 participants from 86 different organizations located in 5 different countries. Our results indicate that TD conception is widespread among more than 70% of respondents. Most of them (72%) recognized its importance and impact on software artifacts, being able to provide a valid example of three different TD Types (i.e., Design, Code, and Architectural). In addition, at least 65% of respondents consider TD identification, TD Repayment, and TD prevention as TDM activities in the spotlight. However, less than 15% adopt formal approaches to support these activities. This paper contributes to TD discussion and TDM activities by showing the practitioner's perspective. Finally, further research will support observing how effective and efficient TDM activities can be in different contexts.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85139113440&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85139113440&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/3555228.3555237
DO - 10.1145/3555228.3555237
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85139113440
T3 - ACM International Conference Proceeding Series
SP - 220
EP - 229
BT - CBSOFT 2022 - 13th Congresso Brasileiro de Software; Proceedings - 36th Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering, SBES 2022
PB - Association for Computing Machinery
T2 - 36th Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering, SBES 2022
Y2 - 3 October 2022 through 7 October 2022
ER -