Identification and management of technical debt: A systematic mapping study

Context The technical debt metaphor describes the effect of immature artifacts on software maintenance that bring a short-term benefit to the project in terms of increased productivity and lower cost, but that may have to be paid off with interest later. Much research has been performed to propose mechanisms to identify debt and decide the most appropriate moment to pay it off. It is important to investigate the current state of the art in order to provide both researchers and practitioners with information that enables further research activities as well as technical debt management in practice. Objective This paper has the following goals: to characterize the types of technical debt, identify indicators that can be used to find technical debt, identify management strategies, understand the maturity level of each proposal, and identify what visualization techniques have been proposed to support technical debt identification and management activities. Method A systematic mapping study was performed based on a set of three research questions. In total, 100 studies, dated from 2010 to 2014, were evaluated. Results We proposed an initial taxonomy of technical debt types, created a list of indicators that have been proposed to identify technical debt, identified the existing management strategies, and analyzed the current state of art on technical debt, identifying topics where new research efforts can be invested. Conclusion The results of this mapping study can help to identify points that still require further investigation in technical debt research.