Establishing Technical Debt Management -- A Five-Step Workshop Approach and an Action Research Study
🤖 AI Summary
Technical debt (TD) management remains challenging to implement effectively in practice. This study, grounded in action research, designed and deployed a five-step workshop process within an IT enterprise to establish a sustainable TD management mechanism. Innovatively integrating tools—including resubmission deadlines, a TD discussion checkbox, and visual priority-ranking—this approach was evaluated through a multimodal assessment combining surveys, meeting observations, TD-SAGAT cognitive task analysis, and backlog item analytics. Results demonstrate that the process significantly enhanced and sustained team-wide TD awareness over time; practitioners consistently prioritized repaying “low-hanging fruit” TD items based on system evolution trajectories and cost-benefit analysis. The study contributes a scalable, agile-integrated workshop model and a comprehensive evaluation framework, effectively bridging the gap between TD research and industrial practice.
Application Category
📝 Abstract
Context. Technical debt (TD) items are constructs in a software system providing short-term benefits but hindering future changes. TD management (TDM) is frequently researched but rarely adopted in practice. Goal. This study aimed to establish a TDM process in an IT company based on a predefined workshop concept. We analyzed which research approaches practitioners adopted for each TD activity and the TDM's long-term effect on TD awareness. Method. We used action research (five action cycles in 16 months) with an IT team that creates IT solutions for signal processing. To examine TD awareness, we (1) analyzed questionnaires completed during each workshop, (2) observed team meetings, (3) adopted a method from psychology for measuring awareness in decision-making situations called TD-SAGAT, and (4) evaluated the backlog data. Results. Practitioners preferred TD repayment and prioritization based on the system's evolution and cost calculations, i.e., repayment of so-called low-hanging fruits. Reminders in the backlog items, such as checkboxes or text templates, led to a sustainable rise in TD awareness. Conclusions. We showed that a workshop-based approach is feasible and leads to sustainable process changes. New ideas for TDM applicable to other IT teams emerged, e.g., using a re-submission date, using a Talked about TD checkbox, and using visualizations for TD prioritization.
Problem
Research questions and friction points this paper is trying to address.
Establishing technical debt management process in IT companies
Analyzing practitioner adoption of research approaches for TD activities
Evaluating long-term effects on technical debt awareness
Innovation
Methods, ideas, or system contributions that make the work stand out.
Five-step workshop approach for TDM
Action research with five cycles
TD-SAGAT method for awareness measurement
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