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When developing software, it is vitally important to keep the level of technical debt down since it is well established from several studies that technical debt can, e.g., lower the development productivity, decrease the developers' morale,…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2021-01-06 Terese Besker , Antonio Martini , Jan Bosch

Technical debt is a pervasive problem in software development. Software development teams have to prioritize debt items and determine whether they should address debt or develop new features at any point in time. This paper presents…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2021-07-13 Rodrigo Rebouças de Almeida , Christoph Treude , Uirá Kulesza

In software engineering, technical debt, signifying the compromise between short-term expediency and long-term maintainability, is being addressed by researchers through various machine learning approaches. This study seeks to provide a…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-11-24 Eric L. Melin , Nasir U. Eisty

Technical Debt is a term begat by Ward Cunningham to signify the measure of adjust required to put a software into that state which it ought to have had from the earliest starting point. Often organizations need to support continuous and…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2019-10-29 Nikhil Oswal

Objective. In this work, we report the experience of a Finnish SME in managing Technical Debt (TD), investigating the most common types of TD they faced in the past, their causes, and their effects. Method. We set up a focus group in the…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2019-08-06 Valentina Lenarduzzi , Teemu Orava , Nyyti Saarimäki , Kari Systä , Davide Taibi

Technical Debt, considered by many to be the 'silent killer' of software projects, has undeniably become part of the everyday vocabulary of software engineers. We know it compromises the internal quality of a system, either deliberately or…

Technical debt (TD) refers to delayed tasks and immature artifacts that may bring short-term benefits but incur extra costs of change during maintenance and evolution in the long term. TD has been extensively studied in the past decade, and…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2022-12-13 Zengyang Li , Yilin Peng , Peng Liang , Apostolos Ampatzoglou , Ran Mo , Hui Liu , Xiaoxiao Qi

The impact of Technical Debt (TD) on software maintenance and evolution is of great concern, but recent evidence shows that a considerable amount of TD is fixed by the same developers who introduced it; this is termed self-fixed TD. This…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2021-06-23 Jie Tan , Daniel Feitosa , Paris Avgeriou

Context: Advances in technical debt research demonstrate the benefits of applying the financial debt metaphor to support decision-making in software development activities. Although decision-making during requirements engineering has…

Technical debt (TD) refers to the long-term costs associated with suboptimal design or code decisions in software development, often made to meet short-term delivery goals. Self-Admitted Technical Debt (SATD) occurs when developers…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2026-04-28 Edi Sutoyo , Andrea Capiluppi

Technical debt denotes shortcuts taken during software development, mostly for the sake of expedience. When such shortcuts are admitted explicitly by developers (e.g., writing a TODO/Fixme comment), they are termed as Self-Admitted…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2022-11-22 Yikun Li , Mohamed Soliman , Paris Avgeriou , Lou Somers

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…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2026-04-14 João Paulo Biazotto , Daniel Feitosa , Paris Avgeriou , Elisa Yumi Nakagawa

Context: Software start-ups are young companies aiming to build and market software-intensive products fast with little resources. Aiming to accelerate time-to-market, start-ups often opt for ad-hoc engineering practices, make shortcuts in…

Context: Technical debt management is challenging for software engineers due to poor tool support and a lack of knowledge on how to prioritize technical debt repayment and prevention activities. Furthermore, when there is a large backlog of…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2018-02-09 Matthieu Foucault , Xavier Blanc , Margaret-Anne Storey , Jean-Rémy Falleri , Cédric Teyton

To effectively manage Technical Debt (TD), we need reliable means to quantify it. We conducted a Systematic Mapping Study (SMS) where we identified TD quantification approaches that focus on different aspects of TD. Some approaches base the…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2023-03-14 Judith Perera , Ewan Tempero , Yu-Cheng Tu , Kelly Blincoe

Technical debt is a well-known challenge in software development, and its negative impact on software quality, maintainability, and performance is widely recognized. In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) has proven to be a promising…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2023-06-21 Srinivas Babu Pandi , Samia A. Binta , Savita Kaushal

Background. Software companies need to manage and refactor Technical Debt issues. Therefore, it is necessary to understand if and when refactoring Technical Debt should be prioritized with respect to developing features or fixing bugs.…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2020-01-31 Valentina Lenarduzzi , Terese Besker , Davide Taibi , Antonio Martini , Francesca Arcelli Fontana

Background. Technical debt (TD) has long been one of the key factors influencing the maintainability of software products. It represents technical compromises that sacrifice long-term software quality for potential short-term benefits.…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2024-07-31 Xiaozhou Li , Matteo Esposito , Andrea Janes , Valentina Lenarduzzi

The concept of technical debt has been explored from many perspectives but its precise estimation is still under heavy empirical and experimental inquiry. We aim to understand whether, by harnessing approximate, data-driven,…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2019-08-05 Valentina Lenarduzzi , Antonio Martini , Davide Taibi , Damian Andrew Tamburri

Technical Debt occurs when development teams favour short-term operability over long-term stability. Since this places software maintainability at risk, technical debt requires early attention to avoid paying for accumulated interest. Most…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2022-10-14 Abdulaziz Alhefdhi , Hoa Khanh Dam , Yusuf Sulistyo Nugroho , Hideaki Hata , Takashi Ishio , Aditya Ghose