The Pandora's box of social, process, and people debts in software engineering

Ahmad, Muhammad Ovais,Associate Professor/LektorKarlstads universitet,Institutionen för matematik och datavetenskap (from 2013) (författare)

In software engineering, technical debt (TD) has been widely investigated, but debt regarding social issues, people, and processes has not been explored as much. It should be noted here that we use nontechnical debt (NTD) as an umbrella term to cover social, process, and people debts. Although the number of studies on NTD in software is increasing, the majority of them are descriptive rather than rigorous, and there is no systematic development of cumulative knowledge. As a result, identifying the fundamental causes of NTD and the associated mitigation techniques in software engineering is challenging. Therefore, this study investigates the scientific evidence regarding NTD till date by conducting a systematic mapping review of software engineering research between January 2000 and October 2021. The search strategy resulted in 175 studies, 17 of which were identified as unique and relevant primary papers. The primary studies show that NTD and TD are inextricably linked. In addition, this study also captured a plethora of causes and mitigation strategies for managing NTD and thus makes four important contributions: (i) highlighting state-of-the-art NTD research; (ii) identification of the reported causes and mitigation strategies in the primary papers; and (iii) determination of opportunities for future NTD research.

NATURVETENSKAP Data- och informationsvetenskap Programvaruteknik hsv//swe
NATURAL SCIENCES Computer and Information Sciences Software Engineering hsv//eng
agile
people debt
process debt
social debt
software development
systematic mapping review
Computer Science
Datavetenskap

Gustavsson, Tomas,1973-Karlstads universitet,Handelshögskolan (from 2013)(Swepub:kau)tomagust (författare)
Karlstads universitetInstitutionen för matematik och datavetenskap (from 2013) (creator_code:org_t)

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