Theoretical conceptualization of TD: A practical perspective

The Technical Debt (TD) metaphor has been used as a way to manage and communicate long-term consequences that some technical decisions may cause. Although intuitive, a lack of practical analysis and demonstrations defers its dissemination over the software community. This exploratory study applied two research methods to characterize the effects associated with a TD item during six years of a real software project lifecycle. First, a quantitative analysis was carried out to characterize the TD item in terms of concrete numbers. Then, Grounded Theory techniques were used to identify categories, properties and their relations, which could together provide a fuller definition of the TD metaphor. The resultant Grounded Theory, in the form of a concept map, confirmed some elements already identified by the technical literature, but also raised up new concepts that should be considered during analysis of TD items. Thus, this work contributes to the effort in building a formal theory about TD and provides directions to assist the work of developers/managers who intend to identify and monitor TD items in their projects, given the practical nature of this study.