Managing technical debt in a multidisciplinary data intensive software team: An observational case study

IF 4.1 2区计算机科学 Q1 COMPUTER SCIENCE, SOFTWARE ENGINEERING

Journal of Systems and Software Pub Date : 2025-07-04 DOI:10.1016/j.jss.2025.112546

Ulrike M. Graetsch , Rashina Hoda , Hourieh Khalajzadeh , Mojtaba Shahin , John Grundy

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Context:

There is an increase in the investment and development of data-intensive (DI) solutions — systems that manage large amounts of data. Without careful management, this growing investment will also grow associated technical debt (TD). Delivery of DI solutions requires a multidisciplinary skill set, but there is limited knowledge about how multidisciplinary teams develop DI systems and manage TD.

Objective:

This research contributes empirical, practice based insights about multidisciplinary DI team TD management practices.

Method:

This research was conducted as an exploratory observation case study. We used socio-technical grounded theory (STGT) for data analysis to develop concepts and categories that articulate TD and TDs debt management practices.

Results:

We identify TD that the DI team deals with, in particular technical data components debt and pipeline debt. We explain how the team manages the TD, assesses TD, what TD treatments they consider and how they implement TD treatments to fit sprint capacity constraints.

Conclusion:

We align our findings to existing TD and TDM taxonomies, discuss their implications and highlight the need for new implementation patterns and tool support for multidisciplinary DI teams.

Abstract Image

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管理多学科数据密集型软件团队中的技术债务：一个观察性案例研究

背景：对数据密集型（DI）解决方案（管理大量数据的系统）的投资和开发有所增加。如果没有谨慎的管理，这种不断增长的投资也会增加相关的技术债务（TD）。DI解决方案的交付需要多学科的技能，但是关于多学科团队如何开发DI系统和管理TD的知识有限。目的：本研究为多学科DI团队TD管理实践提供了实证的、基于实践的见解。方法：本研究采用探索性观察案例研究。我们使用社会技术基础理论（STGT）进行数据分析，以开发阐明TD和TD债务管理实践的概念和类别。结果：我们确定了DI团队处理的TD，特别是技术数据组件债务和管道债务。我们解释了团队如何管理TD，评估TD，他们考虑哪些TD处理方法，以及他们如何实施TD处理方法来适应sprint的能力限制。结论：我们将我们的发现与现有的TD和TDM分类法结合起来，讨论了它们的含义，并强调了对多学科DI团队新的实现模式和工具支持的需求。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Journal of Systems and Software 工程技术-计算机：理论方法

CiteScore

8.60

自引率

5.70%

发文量

193

审稿时长

16 weeks

期刊介绍： The Journal of Systems and Software publishes papers covering all aspects of software engineering and related hardware-software-systems issues. All articles should include a validation of the idea presented, e.g. through case studies, experiments, or systematic comparisons with other approaches already in practice. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: •Methods and tools for, and empirical studies on, software requirements, design, architecture, verification and validation, maintenance and evolution •Agile, model-driven, service-oriented, open source and global software development •Approaches for mobile, multiprocessing, real-time, distributed, cloud-based, dependable and virtualized systems •Human factors and management concerns of software development •Data management and big data issues of software systems •Metrics and evaluation, data mining of software development resources •Business and economic aspects of software development processes The journal welcomes state-of-the-art surveys and reports of practical experience for all of these topics.