research-article

An empirical model of technical debt and interest

Authors:

Ariadi Nugroho,

Tobias KuipersAuthors Info & Claims

MTD '11: Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on Managing Technical Debt

Pages 1 - 8

https://doi.org/10.1145/1985362.1985364

Published: 23 May 2011 Publication History

Abstract

Cunningham introduced the metaphor of technical debt as guidance for software developers that must trade engineering quality against short-term goals.

We revisit the technical debt metaphor, and translate it into terms that can help IT executives better understand their IT investments. An approach is proposed to quantify debts (cost to fix technical quality issues) and interest (extra cost spent on maintenance due to technical quality issues). Our approach is based on an empirical assessment method of software quality developed at the Software Improvement Group (SIG). The core part of the technical debt calculation is constructed on the basis of empirical data of 44 systems that are currently being monitored by SIG.

In a case study, we apply the approach to a real system, and discuss how the results provide useful insights on important questions related to IT investment such as the return on investment (ROI) in software quality improvement.

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Cited By

Kanita N(2024)Modèles explicatifs de la production de la dette technique dans les contextes Agile et DevOps : une revue de la littérature basée sur la méthode BIBGTSystèmes d'information & management10.3917/sim.234.0007Volume 28:4(7-41)Online publication date: 30-Apr-2024
https://doi.org/10.3917/sim.234.0007
Stochel MBorek TWawrowski MChołda P(2024)Business-driven technical debt management using Continuous Debt Valuation Approach (CoDVA)Information and Software Technology10.1016/j.infsof.2023.107333164:COnline publication date: 10-Jan-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.infsof.2023.107333
Zarrad ABahsoon RManimaran P(2024)Optimizing regression testing with AHP-TOPSIS metric system for effective technical debt evaluationAutomated Software Engineering10.1007/s10515-024-00458-531:2Online publication date: 8-Jul-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10515-024-00458-5
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Index Terms

An empirical model of technical debt and interest
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Management of computing and information systems
      1. Implementation management
        Pricing and resource allocation

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

MTD '11: Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on Managing Technical Debt

May 2011

54 pages

ISBN:9781450305860

DOI:10.1145/1985362

Program Chairs:
Ipek Ozkaya
Software Engineering Institute, USA
,
Philippe Kruchten
University of British Columbia, Canada
,
Rod Nord
Software Engineering Institute, USA
,
Nanette Brown
Software Engineering Institute, USA

Copyright © 2011 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Publication History

Published: 23 May 2011

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ICSE11

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SIGSOFT

ICSE11: International Conference on Software Engineering

May 23, 2011

HI, Waikiki, Honolulu, USA

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Overall Acceptance Rate 40 of 92 submissions, 43%

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Cited By

Kanita N(2024)Modèles explicatifs de la production de la dette technique dans les contextes Agile et DevOps : une revue de la littérature basée sur la méthode BIBGTSystèmes d'information & management10.3917/sim.234.0007Volume 28:4(7-41)Online publication date: 30-Apr-2024
https://doi.org/10.3917/sim.234.0007
Stochel MBorek TWawrowski MChołda P(2024)Business-driven technical debt management using Continuous Debt Valuation Approach (CoDVA)Information and Software Technology10.1016/j.infsof.2023.107333164:COnline publication date: 10-Jan-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.infsof.2023.107333
Zarrad ABahsoon RManimaran P(2024)Optimizing regression testing with AHP-TOPSIS metric system for effective technical debt evaluationAutomated Software Engineering10.1007/s10515-024-00458-531:2Online publication date: 8-Jul-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10515-024-00458-5
Perera JTempero ETu YBlincoe K(2024)Modelling the quantification of requirements technical debtRequirements Engineering10.1007/s00766-024-00424-3Online publication date: 6-Jul-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00766-024-00424-3
Slupczynski AAlexander PLichter H(2024)Defining and Evaluating Prudence and Recklessness of Enterprise Architecture DebtEnterprise Information Systems10.1007/978-3-031-64755-0_12(237-261)Online publication date: 26-Jul-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-64755-0_12
Sas DAvgeriou P(2023)An architectural technical debt index based on machine learning and architectural smellsIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.2023.3286179(1-27)Online publication date: 2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/TSE.2023.3286179
Perera JTempero ETu YBlincoe K(2023)Quantifying Requirements Technical Debt: A Systematic Mapping Study and a Conceptual Model2023 IEEE 31st International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE)10.1109/RE57278.2023.00021(123-133)Online publication date: Sep-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/RE57278.2023.00021
Wang XSchuster HBorrison RKlöpper B(2023)Technical Debt Management in Industrial ML - State of Practice and Management Model Proposal2023 IEEE 21st International Conference on Industrial Informatics (INDIN)10.1109/INDIN51400.2023.10217843(1-9)Online publication date: 18-Jul-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/INDIN51400.2023.10217843
Fang HCai YKazman RLefever J(2023)Identifying Anti-Patterns in Distributed Systems With Heterogeneous Dependencies2023 IEEE 20th International Conference on Software Architecture Companion (ICSA-C)10.1109/ICSA-C57050.2023.00035(116-120)Online publication date: Mar-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSA-C57050.2023.00035
Molnar AMotogna S(2023)An Exploration of Technical Debt over the Lifetime of Open-Source SoftwareEvaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering10.1007/978-3-031-36597-3_14(292-314)Online publication date: 8-Jul-2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36597-3_14
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