Related papers: An initial Theory to Understand and Manage Require…

What are the necessary and sufficient conditions for a proposition to be called a requirement? In Requirements Engineering research, a proposition is a requirement if and only if specific grammatical and/or communication conditions hold. I…

Upon evolving their software, organizations and individual developers have to spend a substantial effort to pay back technical debt, i.e., the fact that software is released in a shape not as good as it should be, e.g., in terms of…

Self-Admitted Technical Debt (SATD) refers to instances where developers knowingly introduce suboptimal solutions into code and document them, often through textual artifacts. This paper provides a comprehensive state-of-practice report on…

[Context] In traditional software systems, Requirements Engineering (RE) activities are well-established and researched. However, building Artificial Intelligence (AI) based software with limited or no insight into the system's inner…

Cognitive biases exert a significant influence on human thinking and decision-making. In order to identify how they influence the occurrence of architectural technical debt, a series of semi-structured interviews with software architects…

Self-admitted technical debt (SATD) refers to a form of technical debt in which developers explicitly acknowledge and document the existence of technical shortcuts, workarounds, or temporary solutions within the codebase. Over recent years,…

Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) tools (e.g., ChatGPT, Calude) have rapidly become integral to software development. These tools are especially attractive to students, as they can reduce cognitive load. However, their adoption…

Context: Self-admitted technical debt (SATD) occurs when developers acknowledge shortcuts in code. In scientific software (SSW), such debt poses unique risks to the validity and reproducibility of results. Objective: This study aims to…

With the increasing significance of Research, Technology, and Innovation (RTI) policies in recent years, the demand for detailed information about the performance of these sectors has surged. Many of the current tools are limited in their…

Context: Requirements Engineering (RE)-related activities are critical in developing quality software and one of the most human-dependent processes in software engineering (SE). Hence, identifying the impact of diverse human-related aspects…

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…

Requirements engineering plays a critical role in developing software systems. One of the most difficult tasks in this process is identifying functional requirements. A critical problem in many projects is missing requirements until late in…

Ethnomethodological fieldwork has long been acknowledged as a potentially valuable way of informing the design of technology. However, there is relatively little methodological support for this activity, particularly in relation to the…

Background: Technical Debt (TD) describes suboptimal software development practices with long-term consequences, such as defects and vulnerabilities. Deadlines are a leading cause of the emergence of TD in software systems. While multiple…

The adoption of Machine and Deep Learning (ML/DL) technologies introduces maintenance challenges, leading to Technical Debt (TD). Algorithm Debt (AD) is a TD type that impacts the performance and scalability of ML/DL systems. A review of 42…

Artificial Intelligence is increasingly introduced into systems engineering activities, particularly within requirements engineering, where quality assessment and validation remain heavily dependent on expert judgment. While recent AI tools…

Background: The sensitivity of Requirements Engineering (RE) to the context makes it difficult to efficiently control problems therein, thus, hampering an effective risk management devoted to allow for early corrective or even preventive…

Virtual integration techniques focus on building architectural models of systems that can be analyzed early in the design cycle to try to lower cost, reduce risk, and improve quality of complex embedded systems. Given appropriate…

Complexity in engineered systems presents one of the most persistent challenges in modern development since it is driving cost overruns, schedule delays, and outright project failures. Yet while architectural complexity has been studied,…

A vigorous and growing set of technical debt analysis tools have been developed in recent years -- both research tools and industrial products -- such as Structure 101, SonarQube, and DV8. Each of these tools identifies problematic files…