Technical debt and the effect of agile software development practices on it - An industry practitioner survey

A major reason for the popularity of agile and lean software methods is their capability to function in resource scarce and requirement erratic environments. Both of these characteristics cause accumulation of technical debt, something that is the end result of either intentional or unintentional decisions. The ability of these methods to function with technical debt indicates that they contain components with inherent technical debt management capabilities. This study conducts a survey on industry practitioners to discover what is their level of technical debt knowledge, how does technical debt manifest in their projects and which of the applied components of agile software development - both processes and practices - are sensitive to technical debt. This paper contributes to the technical debt discussion by showing differences in assumed and indicated technical debt knowledge. Furthermore, components closest to implementation and its maintenance are perceived to have the most positive effects on technical debt management. Finally, the most encountered instances of technical debt are caused by architectural inadequacies, they are internal legacy, and increase in size as a result of continued implementation.