The use of incentives to promote Technical Debt management

TL;DR

This paper explores how incentives can be used to encourage effective management of technical debt in software development, addressing a gap in empirical research on managerial communication strategies.

Contribution

It introduces an empirical investigation into incentive-based approaches for promoting technical debt management among software teams.

Findings

Incentives can positively influence technical debt management behaviors.

Effective communication strategies are crucial for incentivizing technical debt reduction.

Empirical data supports the role of incentives in improving software quality.

Abstract

When developing software, it is vitally important to keep the level of technical debt down since it is well established from several studies that technical debt can, e.g., lower the development productivity, decrease the developers' morale, and compromise the overall quality of the software. However, even if researchers and practitioners working in today's software development industry are quite familiar with the concept of technical debt and its related negative consequences, there has been no empirical research focusing specifically on how software managers actively communicate and manage the need to keep the level of technical debt as low as possible.