Understanding automated and human-based technical debt identification approaches-a two-phase study

Brazilian Computer Society. Journal

article

Rodrigo O. Spínola¹  Nico Zazworka²  Antonio Vetro³  Forrest Shull⁴  Carolyn Seaman⁵ 

[1] Graduate Program in Systems and Computer, Salvador University, State University of Bahia;Elsevier;Nexa Center for Internet & Society;Carnegie Mellon University, Software Engineering Institute;Department of Information Systems, University of Maryland Baltimore County

关键词: Technical debt;    Automated technical debt identification;    Human-based technical debt identification;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s13173-019-0087-5

来源: Springer U K

【 摘 要 】

The technical debt (TD) concept inspires the development of useful methods and tools that support TD identification and management. However, there is a lack of evidence on how different TD identification tools could be complementary and, also, how human-based identification compares with them. To understand how to effectively elicit TD from humans, to investigate several types of tools for TD identification, and to understand the developers’ point of view about TD indicators and items reported by tools. We asked developers to identify TD items from a real software project. We also collected the output of three tools to automatically identify TD and compared the results in terms of their locations in the source code. Then, we collected developers’ opinions on the identification process through a focus group. Aggregation seems to be an appropriate way to combine TD reported by developers. The tools used cannot help in identifying many important TD types, so involving humans is necessary. Developers reported that the tools would help them to identify TD faster or more accurately and that project priorities and current development activities are important to be considered together, along with the values of principal and interest, when deciding to pay off a debt. This work contributes to the TD landscape, which depicts an understanding between different TD types and how they are best discovered.

【 授权许可】

Unknown