Technical Debt in Large-Scale Distributed Projects: An Industrial Case StudyShow others and affiliations
2021 (English)In: Proceedings - 2021 IEEE International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering, SANER 2021, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc. , 2021, p. 590-594Conference paper, Published paper (Refereed)
Abstract [en]
Technical debt (TD) is a metaphor that reflects the technical compromises that sacrifice the long-term health of a software product to achieve short term benefit. It is important to manage TD to avoid software degradation. In large-scale distributed projects, technical debt management (TDM) becomes more complex and challenging. There is a lack of empirical studies on the TD accumulation in large-scale distributed projects. Then, to address this gap, we conducted a case study in Ericsson (a European Telecom Company) to identify the relationship between TD accumulation and factors such as task complexity, lead time, total of developers, and task scaling. We used data from 33 projects extracted from managerial documents to conduct a regression analysis. We also conducted interviews with seniors developers of the team to interpret the results. We found out that Task Complexity has a strong relationship (p-value = 5.69 × 10-5) with Technical Debt, while Global Distance was mentioned by the interviewees as a relevant factor for TD accumulation (although not statistically significant in our regression analysis). Practitioners should consider avoiding complex/big tasks, breaking down big tasks into small ones (if possible). We also plan to analyze other projects in this company to confirm our findings further. © 2021 IEEE.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc. , 2021. p. 590-594
Keywords [en]
global software engineering, large-scale, technical debt management, Regression analysis, Distributed projects, Empirical studies, Industrial case study, Managerial documents, Software products, Task complexity, Technical debts, Telecom company, Reengineering
National Category
Software Engineering
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:bth-21604DOI: 10.1109/SANER50967.2021.00071ISI: 000675825200062Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85106614306ISBN: 9781728196305 (print)OAI: oai:DiVA.org:bth-21604DiVA, id: diva2:1564047
Conference
28th IEEE International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering, SANER 2021, 9 March 2021 through 12 March 2021
2021-06-112021-06-112021-09-16Bibliographically approved