BEACon-TD: Classifying Technical Debt and its types across diverse software projects issues using transformers

Abstract

Technical Debt (TD) identification in software projects issues is crucial for maintaining code quality, reducing long-term maintenance costs, and improving overall project health. This study advances TD identification in issues tracker using transformer-based models, addressing the critical need for accurate and efficient TD identification in large-scale software development.

Our methodology employs multiple binary classifiers for TD and its type, combined through ensemble learning, to enhance accuracy and robustness in detecting various forms of TD. We train and evaluate these models on a comprehensive dataset from GitHub Archive Issues (2015–2024), supplemented with industrial data validation.

We demonstrate that in-project fine-tuned transformer models significantly outperform task-specific fine-tuned models in TD classification, highlighting the importance of project-specific context in accurate TD identification. Our research also reveals the superiority of specialized binary classifiers over multi-class models for TD and its type identification, enabling more targeted debt resolution strategies. A comparative analysis shows that the smaller DistilRoBERTa model is more effective than larger language models like GPTs for TD classification tasks, especially after fine-tuning, offering insights into efficient model selection for specific TD detection tasks.

The study also assesses generalization capabilities using metrics such as MCC, AUC ROC, Recall, and F1 score, focusing on model effectiveness, fine-tuning impact, and relative performance. By validating our approach on out-of-distribution and real-world industrial datasets, we ensure practical applicability, addressing the diverse nature of software projects.

This research significantly enhances TD detection and offers a more nuanced understanding of TD types, contributing to improved software maintenance strategies in both academic and industrial settings. The release of our curated dataset aims to stimulate further advancements in TD classification research, ultimately enhancing software project outcomes and development practices by enabling early TD identification and management.