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An enterprise perspective on technical debt

Authors:

Tim Klinger,

Peri Tarr,

Patrick Wagstrom,

Clay WilliamsAuthors Info & Claims

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

Pages 35 - 38

https://doi.org/10.1145/1985362.1985371

Published: 23 May 2011 Publication History

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Abstract

Technical debt is a term that has been used to describe the increased cost of changing or maintaining a system due to expedient shortcuts taken during its development. Much of the research on technical debt has focused on decisions made by project architects and individual developers who choose to trade off short-term gain for a longer-term cost. However, in the context of enterprise software development, such a model may be too narrow. We explore the premise that technical debt within the enterprise should be viewed as a tool similar to financial leverage, allowing the organization to incur debt to pursue options that it couldn't otherwise afford. We test this premise by interviewing a set of experienced architects to understand how decisions to acquire technical debt are made within an enterprise, and to what extent the acquisition of technical debt provides leverage. We find that in many cases, the decision to acquire technical debt is not made by technical architects, but rather by non-technical stakeholders who cause the project to acquire new technical debt or discover existing technical debt that wasn't previously visible. We conclude with some preliminary observations and recommendations for organizations to better manage technical debt in the presence of some enterprise-scale circumstances.

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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
Al-Baik OAbu Alhija MAbdeljaber HOvais Ahmad M(2024)Organizational debt—Roadblock to agility in software engineering: Exploring an emerging concept and future research for software excellencePLOS ONE10.1371/journal.pone.030818319:11(e0308183)Online publication date: 25-Nov-2024
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Silva LSantos I(2024)A Catalog of Prevention Strategies for Test Technical DebtProceedings of the XXIII Brazilian Symposium on Software Quality10.1145/3701625.3701692(706-717)Online publication date: 5-Nov-2024
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Index Terms

An enterprise perspective on technical debt
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Management of computing and information systems
      1. Project and people management
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management

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Published In

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

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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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

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Published: 23 May 2011

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ICSE11: International Conference on Software Engineering

May 23, 2011

HI, Waikiki, Honolulu, USA

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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
Al-Baik OAbu Alhija MAbdeljaber HOvais Ahmad M(2024)Organizational debt—Roadblock to agility in software engineering: Exploring an emerging concept and future research for software excellencePLOS ONE10.1371/journal.pone.030818319:11(e0308183)Online publication date: 25-Nov-2024
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0308183
Silva LSantos I(2024)A Catalog of Prevention Strategies for Test Technical DebtProceedings of the XXIII Brazilian Symposium on Software Quality10.1145/3701625.3701692(706-717)Online publication date: 5-Nov-2024
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Fungprasertkul SBahsoon RKazman R(2024)Technical Debt Monitoring Decision Making with Skin in the GameACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology10.1145/366480533:7(1-27)Online publication date: 26-Aug-2024
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Strategic Management of Technical Debt: Tutorial Synopsis

A portfolio approach to technical debt management

Technical Debt: Where Are the Shareholders' Interests?

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