What's behind tight deadlines? Business causes of technical debt

• Main Authors: REBOUÇAS DE ALMEIDA, Rodrigo, TREUDE, Christoph, KULESZA, Uirá
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2023
• Subjects: technical debt; technical debt management; software evolution; business; Software Engineering
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/8808; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sis_research/article/9811/viewcontent/td.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

What are the business causes behind tight deadlines? What drives the prioritization of features that pushes quality matters to the back burner? We conducted a survey with 71 experienced practitioners and did a thematic analysis of the openended answers to the question: “Could you give examples of how business may contribute to technical debt?” Business-related causes were organized into two categories: pure-business and business/IT gap, and they were related to ‘tight deadlines’ and ‘features over quality’, the most frequently cited management reasons for technical debt. We contribute a cause-effect model which relates the various business causes of tight deadlines and the behavior of prioritizing features over quality aspects.