A Practical Guide to Establishing Technical Debt Management (TDM Guide for Practitioners)

TL;DR

This paper offers a practical, adaptable guide for teams to establish technical debt management, based on collaborative research and real-world case studies, emphasizing best practices and team decision-making.

Contribution

It translates scientific research into a practical, flexible guide for teams to implement technical debt management tailored to their needs.

Findings

Identified practices adopted by all three teams as best practices.

Provided a set of nice-to-have approaches used by at least one team.

Highlighted the importance of team consensus in designing TDM processes.

Abstract

This white paper provides an overview of the topic of "technical debt" and presents an approach for managing technical debt in teams. The white paper is based on the results of my dissertation, which aimed to translate scientific findings into practical guidance. To this end, I collaborated with other researchers to support three teams from different companies in adapting and establishing a technical debt management system tailored to their specific needs. Research findings were supplemented with details or additional approaches. Research results that were less practical were discarded. The result is a guide on establishing technical debt management within a team. The guide is intended to provide orientation and not be a rigid framework. We distinguish between "best practices" and "nice-to-haves." "Best practices" are understood to be all approaches that were adopted by all three teams. "Nice-to-haves" were used by at least one team. In many places, it is explicitly mentioned that the team should decide together how to design the process. This also applies, of course, to all areas where this was not explicitly mentioned. This white paper explicitly does not cover the establishment of technical debt management across the entire company, but provides suggestions for this at the end.