Aligning Technical Debt Prioritization with Business Objectives: A Multiple-Case Study

TL;DR

This paper explores how integrating business process management into technical debt prioritization aligns software maintenance decisions with business goals, based on a multiple-case study with industry insights.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach that incorporates business perspectives into technical debt prioritization using BPM, enhancing decision-making alignment with business objectives.

Findings

Business-oriented prioritization aligns better with business expectations.

BPM can improve technical debt management effectiveness.

Case studies show improved decision-making with business focus.

Abstract

Technical debt (TD) is a metaphor to describe the trade-off between short-term workarounds and long-term goals in software development. Despite being widely used to explain technical issues in business terms, industry and academia still lack a proper way to manage technical debt while explicitly considering business priorities. In this paper, we report on a multiple-case study of how two big software development companies handle technical debt items, and we show how taking the business perspective into account can improve the decision making for the prioritization of technical debt. We also propose a first step toward an approach that uses business process management (BPM) to manage technical debt. We interviewed a set of IT business stakeholders, and we collected and analyzed different sets of technical debt items, comparing how these items would be prioritized using a purely technical versus a business-oriented approach. We found that the use of business process management to support technical debt management makes the technical debt prioritization decision process more aligned with business expectations. We also found evidence that the business process management approach can help technical debt management achieve business objectives.