TY - GEN
T1 - Investigating how agile software practitioners repay technical debt in software projects
AU - Soares, Gabriel
AU - Freire, Savio
AU - Rios, Nicolli
AU - Perez, Boris
AU - Castellanos, Camilo
AU - Correal, Dario
AU - Mendonca, Manoel
AU - Izurieta, Clemente
AU - Seaman, Carolyn
AU - Spinola, Rodrigo
N1 - Funding Information:
This study was financed in part by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoa-mento de Pessoal de Nível Superior Brasil (CAPES) Finance Code 001, by Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tec-nológico (CNPq), and by the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa da Bahia (FAPESB). This research was also supported in part by funds received from the David A. Wilson Award for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, which was created by the Laureate International Universities network to support research focused on teaching and learning.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 ACM.
PY - 2023/1/27
Y1 - 2023/1/27
N2 - Context: The adoption of agile methodologies can bring benefits to software projects, but such methodologies are also prone to technical debt (TD) accumulation. Knowing the practices used for repaying debt items and practice avoidance reasons (PARs) considered for explaining their non-repayment can aid agile practitioners to improve their capacity to manage TD. Aims: To investigate how agile software practitioners repay TD items in software projects. Method: We analyze a data set composed of 179 answers collected through a globally distributed family of industrial surveys on TD. Results: Agile practitioners tend to not repay debt items, mainly for those items that happen very often. The main PARs that explain the non-repayment are focusing on short-term goals, lack of organizational interest, and cost. Conversely, the repayment practices code refactoring, investing effort on TD repayment activities, and investing effort on testing activities are the more commonly used practices for eliminating debt items. We organize all this information in TD repayment boards. Conclusion: TD repayment in agile software projects is still far from ideal. The set of practices and PARs, and the boards can support practitioners in sharing their experiences in TD repayment.
AB - Context: The adoption of agile methodologies can bring benefits to software projects, but such methodologies are also prone to technical debt (TD) accumulation. Knowing the practices used for repaying debt items and practice avoidance reasons (PARs) considered for explaining their non-repayment can aid agile practitioners to improve their capacity to manage TD. Aims: To investigate how agile software practitioners repay TD items in software projects. Method: We analyze a data set composed of 179 answers collected through a globally distributed family of industrial surveys on TD. Results: Agile practitioners tend to not repay debt items, mainly for those items that happen very often. The main PARs that explain the non-repayment are focusing on short-term goals, lack of organizational interest, and cost. Conversely, the repayment practices code refactoring, investing effort on TD repayment activities, and investing effort on testing activities are the more commonly used practices for eliminating debt items. We organize all this information in TD repayment boards. Conclusion: TD repayment in agile software projects is still far from ideal. The set of practices and PARs, and the boards can support practitioners in sharing their experiences in TD repayment.
KW - Technical debt
KW - agile software projects
KW - technical debt repayment
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85147441242
UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/1652de8c-3a7f-366e-b968-0b97e3a944f0/
U2 - 10.1145/3571473.3571499
DO - 10.1145/3571473.3571499
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85147441242
SN - 9781450399999
T3 - ACM International Conference Proceeding Series
SP - 13:1-13:10
BT - SBQS 2022 - Proceedings of the 21st Brazilian Symposium on Software Quality
PB - Association for Computing Machinery
T2 - 21st Brazilian Symposium on Software Quality, SBQS 2022
Y2 - 7 November 2022 through 10 November 2022
ER -