Business-Driven Technical Debt Management

tdm

In this project, we are developing a business-driven technical debt management approach to identify, monitor, and prioritize technical debt.

The approach requires a structured view of the business-value that systems and products generate for the company and its customers. We are also working on a tool (Tracy-TD) that helps in this process.

Our business-driven approach is being validated (all of its concepts, rules, and information are being tested) in the industry. Our goal is to ensure that business-driven prioritization is compatible with business interests.

From the proposed approach, it is possible to identify the technical debt items that have the greatest potential for business impact. The information can help the decision making of both business and technical stakeholders. It is possible to answer questions such as: what technical debt items can affect the core business of the company? What items can affect a specific customer? What items can affect a strategic objective? Which elements of the systems are most affected by technical debt? Which items affect each service, server, database, and module of my products?

Tracy: A Business-driven Technical Debt Prioritization Framework, Rodrigo Rebouças de Almeida, Christoph Treude, Uirá Kulesza, 2019 International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME), 2019
Business-Driven Technical Debt Prioritization, Rodrigo Rebouças de Almeida, 2019 International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME) - Doctoral Symposium, 2019
Aligning Technical Debt Prioritization with Business Objectives: A Multiple-case Study, Rodrigo Rebouças de Almeida, Uirá Kulesza, Christoph Treude, D'angellys Cavalcanti Feitosa and Aliandro Lima, 2018 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME), 2018