Technical Debt Management Reducing Friction in Software Development - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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An outlook on Technical Debt Management

Reducing Friction in Software Development

Paris Avgeriou, Philippe Kruchten, Robert Nord, Ipek Ozkaya, Carolyn Seaman paris@cs.rug.nl

State of the art

› From source code to the whole lifecycle › Glossaries and ontologies (convergent) › Tooling (industrial & prototypes) › Economic theories

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State of practice

SW engineers › Understand the concept and challenges › Deal with it during maintenance › TD management in place

• Resource-intensive
• Realistically only a portion managed

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Main thesis

› Technical debt grows › Managing TD is dominant in SW evolution

• Established as a core SE practice

› It’s the next big thing ++ Investment

• - Bankruptcy

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A perfect storm?

For every 100 KLOC an average software application had approximately US$361,000 of technical debt*

. Curtis et al. “Estimating the Principal of an Application’s TD,” IEEE Software ‘12

Is this really new?

Communities › Maintenance & evolution › Reengineering / refactoring Terms › Aging › Decay › Sustainability › Little progress › “Dull” topic

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Convergence

› Program analysis/comprehension › SW Quality measurement › Qualitative research methods › SW risk management › Industry-academia

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Research output is soaring

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• Z. Li et al., A systematic mapping study on technical debt and its management,

JSS 2015

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4 ways to prepare for the storm

• 1. Management process

› TD prevention › TD identification › TD measurement › TD prioritization › TD monitoring › TD repayment › TD documentation › TD communication

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Li et al., Architectural Debt Management in Value-oriented Architecting, Elsevier ‘14

• 2. Software Economics

› Mimic economics data-driven focus

• Availability of rich data

› Investment strategies › Assign business value to intrinsic qualities › Bridge the communication divide

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• 3. Design and Architecture

› Acknowledge elephant in the room

• Main concerns stem from architecture
• But hard to detect automatically

› Architecture backlog › Traceability with code › Architecture evaluations and refactoring

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• 4. TD in the curriculum

› “No bugs found” vs.

• Internal qualities
• Trading off features with qualities
• Decisions as investments

› Throughout the SE courses

• Brownfield projects
• Linked with software economics

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