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Published August 31, 2020 | Version v1
Conference paper Open

On the Temporality of Introducing Code Technical Debt

  • 1. Department of Applied Informatics, University of MacedoniaThessaloniki, Greece
  • 2. Institute of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands

Description

Code Technical Debt (TD) is intentionally or unintentionally created when developers introduce inefficiencies in the codebase. This can be attributed to various reasons such as heavy work-load, tight delivery schedule, unawareness of good practices, etc. To shed light into the context that leads to technical debt accumulation, in this paper we investigate: (a) the temporality of code technical debt introduction in new methods, i.e., whether the introduction of technical debt is stable across the lifespan of the project, or if its evolution presents spikes; and (b) the relation of technical debt introduction and the development team’s workload in a given period. To answer these questions, we perform a case study on twenty-seven Apache projects, and inspect the number of Technical Debt Items introduced in 6-month sliding temporal windows. The results of the study suggest that: (a) overall, the number of Technical Debt Items introduced through new code is a stable metric, although it presents some spikes; and (b) the number of commits performed is not strongly correlated to the number of introduced Technical Debt Items.

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Additional details

Funding

SDK4ED – Software Development toolKit for Energy optimization and technical Debt elimination 780572
European Commission
EXA2PRO – Enhancing Programmability and boosting Performance Portability for Exascale Computing Systems 801015
European Commission