Automated Measurement of Technical Debt: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Background: Technical Debt (TD) is a quite complex concept that includes several aspect of software development. Often, people talk about TD as the amount of postponed work but this is just a basic approximation of the concept that includes many aspects that are technical and managerial. If TD is managed properly, it can provide a huge advantage but it can also make projects unmaintainable, if not. Therefore, being able of measuring TD is a very important aspect for a proper management of the development process. However, due to the complexity of the concept and the different aspects that are involved, such measurement it not easy and there are several different approaches in literature. Goals: This work aims at investigating the existing approaches to the measurement and the analysis of TD focusing on quantitative methods that could also be automated. Method: The Systematic Literature Review (SLR) approach was applied to 331 studies obtained from the three largest digital libraries and databases. Results: After applying all filtering stages, 21 papers out of 331 were selected and deeply analyzed. The majority of them suggested new approaches to measure TD using different criteria not built on top of existing ones. Conclusions: Existing studies related to the measurement of TD were observed and analyzed. The findings have shown that the field is not mature and there are several models that have almost no independent validation. Moreover few tools for helping to automate the evaluation process exist.

Reproducibility in the technical debt domain

“…The first scientific workshop titled "Workshop on Managing Technical Debt" ( [14]) was organized already in 2010. Khomyakov et al [36] found 603 papers published between 2011 and 2017 related to the automated measurement of technical debt. According to Lenarduzzi et al [38] in 2018 alone (between March 2018 to December 2018) 384 unique papers were published related to technical debt research.…”

Technical Debt Prioritization: State of the Art. A Systematic Literature Review

“…Recently, Khomyakov et al [19] investigated existing tools for the measurement and analysis of TD, focusing on quantitative methods that could also be automated. They selected 21 papers out of 331 retrieved.…”

“…Year Goal [11] 2012 Understanding the nature of TD [5] 2015 TD management and TD classification [14] 2015 Financial approaches for managing TD [15] 2016 TD payment prioritization [16] 2016 TD management strategies, TD taxonomy [17] 2017 TD management elements [18] 2017 TD in Agile development [12] 2018 Managing architectural TD [13] 2018 TD types, management strategies [19] 2019 TD tools…”

The Pandora's box of social, process, and people debts in software engineering

“…In light of the existing literature, it is evident that during the last 10 years, TD has been heavily investigated to understand its functioning from various perspectives. For example, TD effort, [ 6 ] tools, [ 20 ] and types, management strategies [ 21 ] and managing architectural TD [ 22 ] as well as TD in terms of agile development, [ 23 ] management elements, [ 24 ] and prioritization, [ 5 ] etc. Meanwhile, NTD has remained latent and relatively unexplored.…”