i Dr. Carolyn Seaman

"Managing Technical Debt"

(Vortrag des "Fraunhofer IESE" in Kooperation mit dem Fachbereich Informatik)

The term "technical debt" refers to the relationship between the short-term benefits of delaying certain software maintenance tasks and the long-term cost of those delays. This metaphor frames the problem of delayed maintenance tasks as a type of "debt," which brings a short-term benefit (usually in terms of higher productivity or shorter release time) but which might have to be paid back, with "interest," later. The "principal" on the debt is the amount of effort required to "pay off" the debt (i.e. complete the task), while the "interest" is the potential penalty (in terms of increased effort and decreased productivity) that will have to be paid in the future as a result of not completing these tasks in the present. While technical debt is only a metaphor, it describes a very real phenomenon that is well understood by practitioners. The phenomenon is not new, but the metaphor provides new ways of talking about it and inspires new potential solutions that could be adapted from the finance domain. For empirical software engineering researchers, it also provides the ultimate practical application of several long-term streams of work, including software quality, software metrics, risk management, maintenance, and program analysis. This provides a new opportunity to couch research results in these areas in terms that practitioners find interesting and useful, thus allowing a new avenue for technology transfer.