#5659. The use of incentives to promote technical debt management

August 2026publication date
Proposal available till 22-05-2025
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Journal’s subject area:
Information Systems;
Computer Science Applications;
Software;
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Abstract:
Context: When developing software, it is vitally important to keep the level of technical debt down since, based on several studies, it has been well established that technical debt can lower the development productivity, decrease the developers morale and compromise the overall quality of the software, among others. However, even if researchers and practitioners working in todays software development industry are quite familiar with the concept of technical debt and its related negative consequences, there has been no empirical research focusing specifically on how software managers actively communicate and manage the need to keep the level of technical debt as low as possible. Objective: This study aims to understand how software companies give incentives to manage technical debt. This is carried out by exploring how companies encourage and reward practitioners for actively keeping the level of technical debt down add whether the companies use any forcing or penalising initiatives when managing technical debt. Method: As a first step, this paper reports the results of both an online survey providing quantitative data from 258 participants and interviews with 32 software practitioners. As a second step, this study sets out to specifically provide a detailed assessment of additional and in-depth analysis of technical debt management strategies based on an encouraging mindset and attitude from both managers and technical roles to understand how, when and by whom such strategies are adopted in practice.
Keywords:
Empirical study; Software development; Software incentive programs; Technical debt

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