An analysis of techniques and methods for technical debt management: a reflection from the architecture perspective

Technical debt is a metaphor referring to the consequences of weak software development. Managing technical debt is necessary in order to keep it under control, and several techniques have been developed with the goal of accomplishing this. However, available techniques have grown disperse and managers lack guidance. This paper covers this gap by providing a systematic mapping of available techniques and methods for technical debt management, covering architectural debt, and identifying existing gaps that prevent to manage technical debt efficiently

Sustainability Debt: A Metaphor to Support Sustainability Design Decisions

Sustainability, the capacity to endure, is fundamental for the societies on our planet. Despite its increasing recognition in software engineering, it remains difficult to assess the delayed systemic effects of decisions taken in requirements engineering and systems design. To support this difficult task, this paper introduces the concept of sustainability debt. The metaphor helps in the discovery, documentation, and communication of sustainability issues in requirements engineering. We build on the existing metaphor of technical debt and extend it to four other dimensions of sustainability to help think about sustainability-aware software systems engineering. We highlight the meaning of debt in each dimension and the relationships between those dimensions. Finally, we discuss the use of the metaphor and explore how it can help us to design sustainability-aware software intensive systems

Architecting self-aware software systems

Contemporary software systems are becoming increasingly large, heterogeneous, and decentralised. They operate in dynamic environments and their architectures exhibit complex trade-offs across dimensions of goals, time, and interaction, which emerges internally from the systems and externally from their environment. This gives rise to the vision of self-aware architecture, where design decisions and execution strategies for these concerns are dynamically analysed and seamlessly managed at run-time. Drawing on the concept of self-awareness from psychology, this paper extends the foundation of software architecture styles for self-adaptive systems to arrive at a new principled approach for architecting self-aware systems. We demonstrate the added value and applicability of the approach in the context of service provisioning to cloud-reliant service-based applications

The Five Dimensions of Digital Technology Assessment with the Focus on Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

In Technology Management, the assessment of new digital technologies is a challenging process. Most assessments are focusing on cost & benefit. These approaches often fail because main points are neglected. In this paper, the holistic approach of "The Five Dimensions of Digital Technology Assessment" will be described with the example of RPA (Robotic Process Automation). RPA is one of the most promising technologies to save data processing efforts in the office. The Five Dimensions of RPA Assessment is performed by assessing the benefits, technology readiness, usability, company readiness, and the costs that burden the company in the RPA implementation

Architectural technical debt identification:The research landscape

Architectural Technical Debt (ATD) regards sub-optimal design decisions that bring short-term benefits to the cost of long-term gradual deterioration of the quality of the architecture of a software system. The identification of ATD strongly influences the technical and economic sustainability of software systems and is attracting growing interest in the scientific community. During the years several approaches for ATD identification have been conceived, each of them addressing ATD from different perspectives and with heterogeneous characteristics. In this paper we apply the systematic mapping study methodology for identifying, classifying, and evaluating the state of the art on ATD identification from the following three perspectives: publication trends, characteristics, and potential for industrial adoption. Specifically, starting from a set of 509 potentially relevant studies, we systematically selected 47 primary studies and analyzed them according to a rigorously-defined classification framework. The analysis of the obtained results supports both researchers and practitioners by providing (i) an assessment of current research trends and gaps in ATD identification, (ii) a solid foundation for understanding existing (and future) research on ATD identification, and (iii) a rigorous evaluation of its potential for industrial adoption

Knowledge management frameworks in software engineering:a mapping study

Abstract. Knowledge is an important resource that enables organizations to survive in an ever-changing environment. The basic conceptual structure that describes the processes of internal knowledge transfer and transformation is a knowledge management framework, which serves as a foundation for an effective knowledge management strategy. Software engineering processes have some inherent knowledge management in them, but the process alone does not adequately address knowledge management. The main research question was what kind of research has been done on knowledge management frameworks in software engineering. Three assisting research questions were formed to answer the main research question: What types of papers are being published? What are the keywords covered by the knowledge management framework publications? What types of scientific contributions have the publications made? This thesis used mapping study to get an overview into the research efforts made regarding knowledge management frameworks in software engineering. The study used 76 papers from the database of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), which were examined and assigned to multiple categorization schemes, which included research type, keyword coverage, research context, contribution facet and the knowledge management framework type. These resulting categorisations were used to determine the answers to research questions and give insight into the efforts made on knowledge managements frameworks. The results suggest that the efforts on knowledge management frameworks have been consistent over the last 20 years with a peak that corresponds to the popularity trend of research on knowledge management. The publications have been emphasizing few key areas in each categorization scheme. The areas that lack publications are identified, which indicate a research gap

Architectural decision-making as a financial investment:An industrial case study

Context Making architectural decisions is a crucial task but also very difficult, considering the scope of the decisions and their impact on quality attributes. To make matters worse, architectural decisions need to combine both technical and business factors, which are very dissimilar by nature. Objectives We provide a cost-benefit approach and supporting tooling that treats architectural decisions as financial investments by: (a) combining both technical and business factors; and (b) transforming the involved factors into currency, allowing their uniform aggregation. Apart from illustrating the method, we validate both the proposed approach and the tool, in terms of fitness for purpose, usability, and potential limitations. Method To validate the approach, we have performed a case study in a software development company, in the domain of low-energy embedded systems. We employed triangulation in the data collection phase of the case study, by performing interviews, focus groups, an observational session, and questionnaires. Results The results of the study suggested that the proposed approach: (a) provides a structured process for systematizing decision-making; (b) enables the involvement of multiple stakeholders, distributing the decision-making responsibility to more knowledgeable people; (c) uses monetized representations that are important for assessing decisions in a unified manner; and (d) enables decision reuse and documentation. Conclusions The results of the study suggest that architectural decision-making can benefit from treating this activity as a financial investment. The various benefits that have been identified from mixing financial and technological aspects are well-accepted from industrial stakeholders