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On the Temporality of Introducing Code Technical Debt

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Quality of Information and Communications Technology (QUATIC 2020)

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 1266))

Abstract

Code Technical Debt (TD) is intentionally or unintentionally created when developers introduce inefficiencies in the codebase. This can be attributed to various reasons such as heavy work-load, tight delivery schedule, unawareness of good practices, etc. To shed light into the context that leads to technical debt accumulation, in this paper we investigate: (a) the temporality of code technical debt introduction in new methods, i.e., whether the introduction of technical debt is stable across the lifespan of the project, or if its evolution presents spikes; and (b) the relation of technical debt introduction and the development team’s workload in a given period. To answer these questions, we perform a case study on twenty-seven Apache projects, and inspect the number of Technical Debt Items introduced in 6-month sliding temporal windows. The results of the study suggest that: (a) overall, the number of Technical Debt Items introduced through new code is a stable metric, although it presents some spikes; and (b) the number of commits performed is not strongly correlated to the number of introduced Technical Debt Items.

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Notes

  1. 1.

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Acknowledgement

Work reported in this paper has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 780572 (project SDK4ED) and under grant agreement No 801015 (project EXA2PRO).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands

    Georgios Digkas & Paris Avgeriou

  2. Department of Applied Informatics, University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece

    Georgios Digkas, Apostolos Ampatzoglou & Alexander Chatzigeorgiou

Authors
  1. Georgios Digkas
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  2. Apostolos Ampatzoglou
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  3. Alexander Chatzigeorgiou
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  4. Paris Avgeriou
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Georgios Digkas .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Brunel University, London, UK

    Martin Shepperd

  2. Lisbon University Institute, Lisbon, Portugal

    Fernando Brito e Abreu

  3. University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal

    Alberto Rodrigues da Silva

  4. University of Castilla-La Mancha, Talavera de la Reina, Spain

    Ricardo Pérez-Castillo

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Digkas, G., Ampatzoglou, A., Chatzigeorgiou, A., Avgeriou, P. (2020). On the Temporality of Introducing Code Technical Debt. In: Shepperd, M., Brito e Abreu, F., Rodrigues da Silva, A., Pérez-Castillo, R. (eds) Quality of Information and Communications Technology. QUATIC 2020. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1266. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58793-2_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58793-2_6

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-58792-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-58793-2

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