Business-driven technical debt prioritization: An industrial case study

• Main Authors: REBOUÇAS DE ALMEIDA, Rodrigo, DO NASCIMENTO RIBEIRO, Rafael, TREUDE, Christoph, KULESZA, ‪Uirá
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2021
• Subjects: business driven technical debt; case study; technical debt; technical debt management; technical debt prioritization; Software Engineering
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/8942; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sis_research/article/9945/viewcontent/td21.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Incorporating the business perspective into prioritizing technical debt is essential to contribute to decision making in industry. In this paper, we evolve and evaluate a businessdriven approach for technical debt prioritization. The approach was evaluated during a five-months industrial case study with business and technical stakeholders’ active participation. The results show that the approach contributed to aligning business criteria between the business and technical stakeholders. We also observed a downward trend in the amount of technical debt that affects high-value business assets. Moreover, we identified eight business factors that affect the decision making related to the prioritization of technical debt. The study results suggest that the proposed business-driven technical debt prioritization approach can help teams to focus their efforts on paying off the business’ most relevant debt.