Investigating the causes of software technical debt at the architectural level
department or school: Applied Science, Faculty of
department or school: Electrical and Computer Engineering, Department of
data provider: DSpace
degree campus: UBCV
creator: Hsu, Jen Tsu
issued: 2018-09-24T17:11:38Z
issued: 2018
related degree: Master of Applied Science - MASc
degree grantor: University of British Columbia
description: Architectural technical debt (ATD) describes the consequences of intentionally or unintentionally making architectural design decisions that compromise the internal quality of a software system. These consequences include long-term software evolution and maintenance issues that jeopardize software developer productivity. The architectural aspect of technical debt has been receiving significant interest from technical debt researchers, but many questions concerning architectural technical debt itself have yet to be answered. The main goal of this exploratory multiple-case study is to investigate architectural technical debt’s causes and accumulations at the design decision-level by examining software practitioners’ experiences with architectural technical debt and creating taxonomies that would aid software practitioners and technical debt researchers in the future. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 18 participants and an interview-style online questionnaire with 10 participants. From the data collected, we obtained 53 architectural technical debt issues in 15 non-trivial software intensive projects from eight organizations. The results of this study present two architectural technical debt taxonomies on the causes and accumulations of this issue. Then, we report our findings on current architectural technical debt management practices and practitioner experiences with architectural technical debt.
aggregated CHO: https://circle.library.ubc.ca/rest/handle/2429/67243
note: Investigating the Causes of Software Technical Debt at the Architectural Level by Jen Tsu Hsu B.A.Sc., The University of British Columbia, 2015 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF APPLIED SCIENCE in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (Electrical and Computer Engineering) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) September 2018 © Jen Tsu Hsu, 2018 ii The following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies for acceptance, a thesis/dissertation entitled: Investigating the Causes of Software Technical Debt at the Architectural Level submitted by Jen Tsu Hsu in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Applied Science in Electrical and Computer Engineering Examining Committee: Dr. Philippe Kruchten, Electrical and Computer Engineering Supervisor Dr. Ali Mesbah, Electrical and Computer Engineering Supervisory Committee Member Dr. Sathish Gopalakrishnan, Electrical and Computer Engineering Supervisory Committee Member Additional Examiner Additional Supervisory Committee Members: Supervisory Committee Member Supervisory Committee Member iii Abstract Architectural technical debt (ATD) describes the consequences of intentionally or unintentionally making architectural design decisions that compromise the internal quality of a software system. These consequences include long-term software evolution and maintenance issues that jeopardize software developer productivity. The architectural aspect of technical debt has been receiving significant interest from technical debt researchers, but many questions concerning architectural technical debt itself have yet to be answered. The main goal of this exploratory multiple-case study is to investigate architectural technical debt’s causes and accumulations at the design decision-level by examining software practitioners’ experiences with architectural technical debt and crea…
has type: Thesis/Dissertation
date issued: 2018-11
is shown at: 10.14288/1.0372145
language: eng
degree discipline: Electrical and Computer Engineering
provider: Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
publisher: University of British Columbia
rights: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
rights URI: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
scholar level: Graduate
type: Text
identifier URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/67243