When-to-Release Decisions in Consideration of Technical Debt

Abstract

Shortening release duration is essential in creating competitive products in iterative software development. However, short-term expedients (e.g., code compromises, delayed change requests, etc.) can have long term effects on the maintenance of the software. There are multifaceted factors that influenced the effective management of technical debt in organizations. In this position paper, we propose a formulation of technical debt in the context of (software) product releases, specifically when-to-release decisions. The potential competitive advantage through faster delivery needs to be balanced against the delivery of the overall business values and the potentially incurred technical debt. Pro-active analysis of the estimated impact of various release scenarios is expected to provide insights and essential inputs for actual decision-making process. This paper also evaluates a real-world case study.

Architecture and Technical Debt Agile Planning Methodology for Software Production

“…They believe that using this ILP method in release planning will help in selecting the most appropriate features backlog based on revenues and costs, which takes into consideration both the business and technical perspectives. Jason Ho and Guenther Ruhe [13] introduced a method called Goal-Questions-Metrics (GQM) which helps in quantifying the technical debt coupled with a specific release in order to be able to give more accurate release dates.…”

Software release planning

“…• Provide insight about various extensions of the SRP problem (e.g., theme-based SRP [6], consideration of quality [7]), technical debt [8] or release readiness [9].…”

An Analysis of Techniques and Methods for Technical Debt Management: A Reflection from the Architecture Perspective

“…10) When to Implement Decisions: Several authors identify reléase planning as the step during which decisions about technical debt management can be executed [40] [41] [45]. Two different decisions have been identified.…”