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Generative AI is accelerating software development, but may quietly shift where the most significant risks lie. As AI generates code faster than teams can understand it, two under appreciated forms of debt accumulate: cognitive debt, the…
Quantum computing is a rapidly growing field attracting the interest of both researchers and software developers. Supported by its numerous open-source tools, developers can now build, test, or run their quantum algorithms. Although the…
Context. Technical debt (TD) items are constructs in a software system providing short-term benefits but hindering future changes. TD management (TDM) is frequently researched but rarely adopted in practice. Goal. This study aimed to…
Background: Software companies must balance fast value delivery with quality, a trade-off that can introduce technical debt and potentially waste developers' time. As software systems evolve, technical debt tends to increase. However,…
AI coding assistants are now widely used in software development. Software developers increasingly integrate AI-generated code into their codebases to improve productivity. Prior studies have shown that AI-generated code may contain code…
Software engineering is a human activity. Despite this, human aspects are under-represented in technical debt research, perhaps because they are challenging to evaluate. This study's objective was to investigate the relationship between…
In the software development industry, technical debt is regarded as a critical issue in term of the negative consequences such as increased software development cost, low product quality, decreased maintainability, and slowed progress to…
The technical debt (TD) metaphor describes actions made during various stages of software development that lead to a more costly future regarding system maintenance and evolution. According to recent studies, on average 25% of development…
Research software (also called scientific software) is essential for advancing scientific endeavours. Research software encapsulates complex algorithms and domain-specific knowledge and is a fundamental component of all science. A pervasive…
Existing software tools enable characterizing and measuring the amount of technical debt at selective granularity levels. In this paper we aim to study the evolution and characteristics of technical debt in open-source software. We carry…
Background: Technical debt (TD) has been widely discussed in software engineering research, and there is an emerging literature linking it to developer characteristics. However, developer personality has not yet been studied in this…
Static Analysis Tools (SATs) are central to security engineering activities, as they enable early identification of code weaknesses without requiring execution. However, their effectiveness is often limited by high false-positive rates and…
Managing technical debt (TD) is critical to ensure the sustainability of long-term software projects. However, the time and cost involved in technical debt management (TDM) often discourage practitioners from performing this activity…
Background: With the rising popularity of Artificial Intelligence (AI), there is a growing need to build large and complex AI-based systems in a cost-effective and manageable way. Like with traditional software, Technical Debt (TD) will…
Software documentation often struggles to catch up with the pace of software evolution. The lack of correct, complete, and up-to-date documentation results in an increasing number of documentation defects which could introduce delays in…
The long lifetime and the evolving nature of industrial products make them subject to technical debt at different levels. Despite multiple years of research on technical debt management, our industrial experience shows that introducing…
Technical Debt (TD) refers to the long-term costs incurred when developers prioritize short-term delivery over quality-improving work. Architectural Technical Debt (ATD) arises when architectural decisions (e.g., technology choices,…
Agentic AI systems are increasingly being explored as production infrastructure: they reason over multiple steps, call tools, act through workflows, and adapt through memory and feedback. These systems create governance challenges that are…
Background: Software security is crucial to ensure that the users are protected from undesirable consequences such as malware attacks which can result in loss of data and, subsequently, financial loss. Technical Debt (TD) is a metaphor…
Smart contracts are self-enforcing agreements that are employed to exchange assets without the approval of trusted third parties. This feature has encouraged various sectors to make use of smart contracts when transacting. Experience shows…