Profiling Developers Through the Lens of Technical Debt

Abstract

Context: Technical Debt needs to be managed to avoid disastrous consequences, and investigating developers' habits concerning technical debt management is invaluable information in software development. Objective: This study aims to characterize how developers manage technical debt based on the code smells they induce and the refactorings they apply. Method: We mined a publicly-available Technical Debt dataset for Git commit information, code smells, coding violations, and refactoring activities for each developer of a selected project. Results: By combining this information, we profile developers to recognize prolific coders, highlight activities that discriminate among developer roles (reviewer, lead, architect), and estimate coding maturity and technical debt tolerance.