A Practical Guide to Establishing Technical Debt Management

2026-01-16

AI Summary

This study addresses the gap in existing technical debt management approaches, which predominantly focus on organizational or project-level strategies and lack actionable guidance tailored for development teams. Through action research and multi-case collaboration with three enterprise teams, the authors derive a flexible, customizable team-level technical debt management guide. The guide distinguishes between “best practices” and “optional recommendations,” emphasizing team autonomy and practical feasibility while avoiding rigid frameworks. This approach enables teams to construct context-appropriate management processes aligned with their specific needs. Empirical validation from real-world implementations demonstrates the guide’s effectiveness and offers a viable pathway for translating academic insights into engineering practice.

Technology Category

• Multiagent Systems: Teamwork
• Data Mining & Knowledge Management: Web
• Humans and AI: Planning and Decision Support for Human-Machine Teams

Application Category

• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Practical large-scale studies of user experience
• Responsible Web: Social and technical mechanisms of refusal for web technologies and applications
• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Energy management for devices in mobile Web and WoT environments

Abstract

This white paper provides an overview of the topic of"technical debt"and presents an approach for managing technical debt in teams. The white paper is based on the results of my dissertation, which aimed to translate scientific findings into practical guidance. To this end, I collaborated with other researchers to support three teams from different companies in adapting and establishing a technical debt management system tailored to their specific needs. Research findings were supplemented with details or additional approaches. Research results that were less practical were discarded. The result is a guide on establishing technical debt management within a team. The guide is intended to provide orientation and not be a rigid framework. We distinguish between"best practices"and"nice-to-haves.""Best practices"are understood to be all approaches that were adopted by all three teams."Nice-to-haves"were used by at least one team. In many places, it is explicitly mentioned that the team should decide together how to design the process. This also applies, of course, to all areas where this was not explicitly mentioned. This white paper explicitly does not cover the establishment of technical debt management across the entire company, but provides suggestions for this at the end.

Problem

• technical debt
• debt management
• software teams
• practical guidance
• best practices

Innovation

• technical debt management
• practical guidance
• team-based adaptation
• best practices
• empirical research translation