International Conference on Technical DebtTechDebt 2018
Welcome to the website of TechDebt 2018.
Technical debt describes a universal software development phenomenon: design or implementation constructs that are expedient in the short term but set up a technical context that can make future changes more costly or impossible. Software developers and managers increasingly use the concept to communicate key tradeoffs related to release and quality issues. The goal of this two-day conference is to bring together leading software researchers, practitioners, and tool vendors to explore theoretical and practical techniques that manage technical debt.
The Managing Technical Debt workshop series has provided a forum since 2010 for practitioners and researchers to discuss issues related to technical debt and share emerging practices used in software-development organizations. A week-long Dagstuhl Seminar on Managing Technical Debt in Software Engineering has produced a consensus definition for technical debt, a draft conceptual model, and a research roadmap.
To accelerate progress, an expanded two-day working conference format has become essential. The inaugural edition of the TechDebt Conference will be held jointly with ICSE 2018 in Gothenburg, Sweden, May 27–28, 2018. The conference is sponsored by ACM SIGSOFT and IEEE TCSE.
News
- Save the Date! TechDebt 2019 in conjunction with ICSE, May 26-27, 2019.
- The program is posted.
- Early registration ends on April 1, 2018
- The accepted papers and tools track topics are posted.
- Eoin Woods will speak at the conference on The Past, Present and Future of Technical Debt.
- The Call for Papers is announced
- Join our mailing list to receive updates about TechDebt 2018.
Sun 27 MayDisplayed time zone: Amsterdam, Berlin, Bern, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna change
09:00 - 09:30 | |||
09:00 30mTalk | Opening Remarks: The Journey from Metaphor to Theory and Practice TechDebt 2018 Paul Nielsen Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute, Robert Nord Software Engineering Institute |
09:30 - 10:30 | |||
09:30 30mTalk | An Exploratory Study on the Influence of Developers in Technical Debt TechDebt 2018 Reem Alfayez , Pooyan Behnamghader University of Southern California, USA, Kamonphop Srisopha University of Southern California, USA, Barry Boehm University of Southern California | ||
10:00 30mTalk | Architectural Technical Debt Identification: The Research Landscape TechDebt 2018 Roberto Verdecchia Gran Sasso Science Institute, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Ivano Malavolta Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Patricia Lago Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Link to publication Pre-print |
11:00 - 12:30 | |||
11:00 30mTalk | Technical Debt as an External Software Attribute TechDebt 2018 Luigi Lavazza Università degli Studi dell'Insubria, Sandro Morasca Università degli Studi dell'Insubria | ||
11:30 30mTalk | Prioritizing Technical Debt in Database Normalization Using Portfolio Theory and Data Quality Metrics TechDebt 2018 | ||
12:00 30mTalk | Evaluating Domain-Specific Metric Thresholds: An Empirical Study TechDebt 2018 Gustavo Vale University of Passau, Markos Viggiato Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil, Eduardo Figueiredo UFMG, Pooyan Jamshidi Carnegie Mellon University |
14:00 - 14:30 | |||
14:00 5mTalk | Tools Track Introduction TechDebt 2018 Clemente Izurieta Montana State University | ||
14:05 5mTalk | Introducing Debtgrep: A Tool for Fighting Technical Debt in Base Station Software TechDebt 2018 Svante Arvedahl Ericsson AB | ||
14:10 5mTalk | Static Software Metrics for Reliability and Maintainability TechDebt 2018 Jeremy Ludwig Stottler Henke Associates, Inc. | ||
14:15 5mTalk | AnaConDebt: A Tool to Assess and Track Technical Debt TechDebt 2018 Antonio Martini University of Oslo | CA Technologies | ||
14:20 5mIndustry talk | Cognitive Complexity: An Origin Story Overview and Evaluation TechDebt 2018 G. Ann Campbell SonarSource SA File Attached | ||
14:25 5mTalk | Prioritize Technical Debt in Large-Scale Systems Using CodeScene TechDebt 2018 Adam Tornhill Empear AB |
14:30 - 15:30 | |||
16:00 - 16:45 | Managing the Debt I (Short Papers)TechDebt 2018 at R17+18 Chair(s): Ipek Ozkaya Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute | ||
16:00 15mTalk | The Developer's Dilemma: Factors Affecting the Decision to Repay Code Debt TechDebt 2018 Alexander Chatzigeorgiou University of Macedonia | ||
16:15 15mTalk | From Lasagna to Spaghetti: A Decision Model to Manage Defect Debt TechDebt 2018 Abdullah Aldaeej University of Maryland Baltimore County, Carolyn Seaman University of Maryland Baltimore County File Attached | ||
16:30 15mTalk | A Proposed Sizing Model for Managing Technical Debt in Third-Party Code TechDebt 2018 |
16:45 - 17:30 | DiscussionTechDebt 2018 at R17+18 Chair(s): Ipek Ozkaya Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute | ||
Mon 28 MayDisplayed time zone: Amsterdam, Berlin, Bern, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna change
09:00 - 10:30 | |||
09:00 90mTalk | Keynote: The Past, Present, and Future of Technical Debt: Learning from the Past to Prepare for the Future TechDebt 2018 |
11:00 - 12:30 | Managing the Debt IITechDebt 2018 at R17+18 Chair(s): Antonio Martini University of Oslo | CA Technologies | ||
11:00 30mTalk | Governing Technology Debt: Beyond Technical Debt TechDebt 2018 Johan Magnusson Swedish Center for Digital Innovation, University of Gothenburg, Carlos Juiz University of the Balearic Islands | ||
11:30 30mTalk | Trade-off Decisions Across Time in Technical Debt Management: A Systematic Literature Review TechDebt 2018 | ||
12:00 30mTalk | Design Debt Prioritization: A Design Best Practice-Based Approach TechDebt 2018 |
14:00 - 15:30 | |||
14:00 30mTalk | Technical Debt Cripples Software Developer Productivity: A Longitudinal Study on Developers' Daily Software Development Work TechDebt 2018 Terese Besker Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, Antonio Martini University of Oslo | CA Technologies, Jan Bosch Chalmers University of Technology | ||
14:30 30mTalk | A Framework for Managing Interest in Technical Debt: An Industrial Validation TechDebt 2018 Areti Ampatzoglou , Alexander Chatzigeorgiou University of Macedonia, Paris Avgeriou University of Groningen, The Netherlands | ||
15:00 30mTalk | Limiting Technical Debt with Maintainability Assurance: An Industry Survey on Used Techniques and Differences with Service- and Microservice-Based Systems TechDebt 2018 Pre-print |
16:00 - 16:30 | Future Research (Short Papers)TechDebt 2018 at R17+18 Chair(s): Carolyn Seaman University of Maryland Baltimore County | ||
16:00 15mTalk | Technical Debt-Related Information Asymmetry Between Finance and IT TechDebt 2018 Thomas Patrick Stablein University of South Florida | ||
16:15 15mTalk | A Position Study to Investigate Technical Debt Associated with Security Weaknesses TechDebt 2018 Clemente Izurieta Montana State University |
16:30 - 17:15 | |||
17:15 - 17:30 | Closing RemarksTechDebt 2018 at R17+18 Chair(s): Robert Nord Software Engineering Institute, Ipek Ozkaya Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute | ||
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Accepted Papers
Call for Papers
The First International Conference on Technical Debt will be held in Gothenburg, Sweden, on May 27-28, 2018 collocated with ICSE 2018.
Technical debt is a metaphor that software developers and managers increasingly use to communicate key tradeoffs related to release and quality issues. The Managing Technical Debt workshop series had, since 2010, brought together practitioners and researchers to discuss and define issues related to technical debt and how they can be studied. Workshop participants reiterated the usefulness of the concept each year, shared emerging practices used in software development organizations, and emphasized the need for more research and better means for sharing emerging practices and results.
As the interest from our industry and academic researchers in Technical Debt has steadily grown, the workshop series has morphed into a full conference in 2018. Our goal for this conference on Technical Debt is to bring together leading software engineering researchers and practitioners for the purpose of exploring theoretical and practical techniques for managing technical debt.
Topics of interest
The following topics are aligned with the conference theme:
- Identification of technical debt
- Visualization of technical debt
- Analysis of technical debt
- Metrics for technical debt
- Economic models for describing or reasoning about technical debt
- Understanding causes and effects of technical debt
- Relationship of technical debt to software evolution, maintenance, and aging
- Relationship of technical debt with other activities, such as testing or requirement elicitation
- The business case for technical debt management
- Technical debt and software life-cycle management
- Technical debt within a software ecosystem
- Technical debt in designs and architecture
- Technical debt in software models
- Techniques and tools for calculating technical debt principal and interest
- Concrete practices and tools used to measure and control technical debt
- Education related to technical debt
Submission information
We invite submissions of papers in any areas related to the theme and goal of the conference in the following three categories:
- Research Papers: describing innovative and significant original research in the field (up to 10 pages max.)
- Industrial Papers: describing industrial experience, case studies, challenges, problems, and solutions (up to 10 pages max)
- Short papers: Position and Future Trend Papers: describing ongoing research, new results (up to 5 pages max.)
Submissions must be original and unpublished work. Each submitted paper will undergo a rigorous review process by three members of the program committee. Submissions must be submitted online via the TechDebtConf2018 EasyChair conference management system and conform to the ACM formatting guidelines .
Upon notification of acceptance, all authors of accepted papers will be asked to complete an ACM Copyright form and will receive further instructions for preparing their camera ready versions. All accepted contributions will be published in the conference electronic proceedings. The official publication date is the date the proceedings are made available in the ACM Digital Library. This date may be up to two weeks prior to the first day of ICSE 2018. The official publication date affects the deadline for any patent filings related to published work. Purchases of additional pages in the proceedings is not allowed.
Accepted papers must be presented in person at the conference by one of the authors. Excellent papers will be considered for a Distinguished Paper Award from ACM Sigsoft.
Calendar for submission:
* January 15: | Abstract submitted to EasyChair |
* January 22: | Full papers entered in EasyChair |
* March 1: | Notification of acceptance / rejection |
* March 15: | Camera ready submission of final paper |
* May 27-28: | Presentations |
Tools Track
TechDebt 2018 is the first International Conference on Technical Debt. It brings together leading researchers and industry practitioners in this growing field. Industry plays a critical role in the understanding of the management, monitoring, and calculations of technical debt in real world situations, and as such, new techniques, methods and tools that can aid practitioners and decision makers in these critical tasks are cordially invited to participate at TechDebt 2018, to be held in conjunction with ICSE 2018 in Gothenburg, Sweden.
Submission format
Industry representatives interested in participating are encouraged to submit a letter of interest by January 5th, 2018 directly to Dr. Clemente Izurieta (clemente.izurieta@montana.edu).
In your letter please state how you will contribute. There are various ways to participate:
- Submit an extended abstract (maximum of 2 pages). Abstracts are due on January 15th, 2018. Although extended abstracts are not peer reviewed, abstracts will be screened to ensure they meet the expectations of the tools track and are aligned with the overarching technical debt theme of the conference. In the abstract we suggest that authors address the purpose of the tool, its use in industry (if applicable), and its relevance to technical debt. Authors of accepted abstracts will be required to participate in a panel discussion.
- Tools Paper. Abstracts are due on January 15th, 2018, and papers are due on January 22nd, 2018. The intent of this option is to give vendors an opportunity to communicate tool experiences (e.g., practice, prototype, experimental, or new research) in tools associated with technical debt. Submissions can be in the form of short, industrial or research papers as specified in the Call for Papers at https://2018.techdebtconf.org/track/TechDebt-2018-papers#Call-for-Papers. These papers will be peer reviewed and must be submitted through EasyChair. When you submit, make sure you specify “Vendor Tools” in the keywords section of your paper. Authors of accepted papers will be required to present their results.
- Tool demonstration. If you propose to showcase a product from your company or organization, please let us know your power and space requirements.
- Poster. A poster should describe a tool, or some aspect consistent with tools of the trade. Poster abstracts are due on January 15th, 2018. Posters will be screened to ensure they meet the expectations of the tools track and are aligned with the overarching technical debt theme of the conference.
Inquiries
All inquiries may be directed to clemente.izurieta@montana.edu
Speakers
Keynote: The Past, Present, and Future of Technical Debt: Learning from the Past to Prepare for the Future
Speaker: Eoin Woods
While technical debt has emerged as a formal concept relatively recently we have had technical debt from the earliest days of software development, it has simply evolved in nature. So what can we learn from past types of technical debt to allow us to prepare for its future forms? When we look back over recent software history, we can see identifiable evolutions of software systems, each one roughly aligning with a decade. In this talk we will explore what technical debt has meant during each era of software systems and what this might mean for technical debt in the future.
Eoin Woods is the CTO of Endava, a technology company that delivers projects in the areas of digital, agile, and automation. Prior to joining Endava, Eoin worked in the software engineering industry for 20 years, developing system software products and complex applications in the capital markets domain. His main technical interests are software architecture, distributed systems, and computer security, and he is the author of a book and a number of practitioner and research publications in these fields. Eoin can be contacted via his website at www.eoinwoods.info.
Accepted Research, Industrial, and Short Papers
-
An Exploratory Study on the Influence of Developers in Technical Debt
Reem Alfayez, Pooyan Behnamghader, Kamonphop Srisopha, and Barry Boehm -
Limiting Technical Debt with Maintainability Assurance: An Industry Survey on Used Techniques and Differences with Service- and Microservice-Based Systems
Justus Bogner, Jonas Fritzsch, Stefan Wagner, and Alfred Zimmermann -
A Position Study to Investigate Technical Debt Associated with Security Weakness
Clemente Izurieta, David Rice, Kali Kimball, and Tessa Valentien -
Technical Debt as an External Software Attribute
Luigi Lavazza, Sandro Morasca, and Davide Tosi -
Governing Technology Debt: Beyond Technical Debt
Johan Magnusson, Carlos Juiz, Beatriz Gomez, and Belen Bermejo -
Prioritizing Technical Debt in Database Normalization Using Portfolio Theory and Data Quality Metrics
Mashel Albarak and Rami Bahsoon -
Trade-off Decisions Across Time in Technical Debt Management: A Systematic Literature Review
Christoph Becker, Ruzanna Chitchyan, Stefanie Betz, and Curtis McCord -
Design Debt Prioritization: A Design Best Practice-Based Approach
Reinhold Ploesch, Johannes Braeuer, Christian Koerner, and Matthias Saft -
Evaluating Domain-Specific Metric Thresholds: An Empirical Study
Allan Victor Mori, Gustavo Vale, Markos Viggiato, Johnatan Oliveira, Eduardo Figueiredo, Elder Cirilo, Pooyan Jamshidi, and Christian Kastner -
The Developer’s Dilemma: Factors Affecting the Decision to Repay Code Debt
Theodoros Amanatidis, Nikolaos Mittas, Alexander Chatzigeorgiou, Apostolos Ampatzoglou, and Lefteris Angelis -
A Framework for Managing Interest in Technical Debt: An Industrial Validation
Areti Ampatzoglou, Alexander Michailidis, Christos Sarikyriakidis, Apostolos Ampatzoglou, Alexander Chatzigeorgiou, and Paris Avgeriou -
Architectural Technical Debt Identification: The Research Landscape
Roberto Verdecchia, Ivano Malavolta, and Patricia Lago -
From Lasagna to Spaghetti: A Decision Model to Manage Defect Debt
Abdullah Aldaeej and Carolyn Seaman -
Technical Debt Cripples Software Developer Productivity: A Longitudinal Study on Developers’ Daily Software Development Work
Terese Besker, Antonio Martini, and Jan Bosch -
A Proposed Sizing Model for Managing Third-Party Code Technical Debt
Will Snipes and Srini Ramaswamy -
Technical Debt-Related Information Asymmetry Between Finance and IT
Thomas Stablein, Don Berndt, and Matthew Mullarkey
Tools Track
-
Introducing Debtgrep, a Tool for Fighting Technical Debt in Base Station Software
Svante Arvedahl, Ericsson -
Static Software Metrics for Reliability and Maintainability
Jeremy Ludwig and Steven Xu, Stottler Henke Associates, Inc., and Frederick Webber, Air Force Research Laboratory -
AnaConDebt: A Tool to Assess and Track Technical Debt
Antonio Martini, University of Oslo -
Cognitive Complexity: An Origin Story Overview and Evaluation
Ann Campbell, SonarSource S.A. -
Prioritize Technical Debt in Large-Scale Systems Using CodeScene
Adam Tornhill, Empear AB
Committees
Steering Committee
Paris Avgeriou, University of Groningen |
Philippe Kruchten, University of British Columbia |
Robert L. Nord, Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute |
Ipek Ozkaya, Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute |
Carolyn Seaman, University of Maryland Baltimore County |
Program Committee
Philippe Kruchten | University of British Columbia | Program Co-chair |
Frank Buschmann | Siemens AG | Program Co-chair |
Esra Alzaghoul | University of Jordan | |
Francesca Arcelli Fontana | University of Milano Bicocca | |
Paris Avgeriou | University of Groningen | |
Stephany Bellomo | Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute | |
Ayse Bener | Ryerson University | |
Terese Besker | Chalmers University of Technology | |
Christian Bird | Microsoft Research | |
Jan Bosch | Chalmers University of Technology | |
Alexander Chatzigeorgiou | University of Macedonia | |
Zadia Codabux | Colby College | |
Robert Eisenberg | Lockheed Martin | |
Hakan Erdogmus | Carnegie Mellon University | |
Davide Falessi | California Polytechnic State University | |
Steven Fraser | Innoxec | |
Juan Garbajosa | Universidad Politecnica de Madrid (UPM) | |
Olivier Gaudin | SonarSource | |
Johannes Holvitie | University of Turku | |
Clemente Izurieta | Montana State University | |
Andreas Jedlitschka | Fraunhofer IESE | |
Sven Johann | innoQ | |
Heiko Koziolek | ABB Corporate Research | |
Ville Leppänen | University of Turku | |
Jean-Louis Letouzey | inspearit | |
Alan MacCormack | Harvard | |
Antonio Martini | Chalmers University of Technology | |
Grigori Melnik | MongoDB | |
Andrew Meneely | Rochester Institute of Technology | |
David Morgenthaler | Google, Inc. | |
Ipek Ozkaya | Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute | |
Jennifer Perez | Technical University of Madrid (UPM) | |
Eltjo Poort | CGI | |
Terri Potts | Raytheon | |
Narayan Ramasubbu | University of Pittsburgh | |
Gonzalo Rojas | University of Concepcion | |
Klaus Schmid | University of Hildesheim | |
Carolyn Seaman | University of Maryland Baltimore County | |
Andriy Shapochka | SoftServe Inc. | |
Emad Shihab | Concordia University | |
Forrest Shull | Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute | |
Will Snipes | ABB Corporate Research | |
Wolfgang Trumler | Siemens AG | |
Eberhard Wolff | innoQ | |
Jesse Yli-Huumo | Aalto University | |
Olaf Zimmermann | University of Applied Sciences (HSR FHO) |
Previous Editions
TechDebt 2018
To accelerate progress, an expanded two-day working conference format has become essential. The inaugural edition of the TechDebt Conference was held jointly with ICSE 2018 in Gothenburg, Sweden, May 27–28, 2018. Researchers, practitioners, and tool vendors explored theoretical and practical techniques that manage technical debt.
Dagstuhl Seminar: Managing Technical Debt in Software Engineering
A week-long Dagstuhl Seminar on Managing Technical Debt in Software Engineering, April 17 – 22 , 2016, has produced a consensus definition for technical debt, a draft conceptual model, and a research roadmap.
International Workshop on Managing Technical Debt Series
The Managing Technical Debt workshop series has provided a forum since 2010 for practitioners and researchers to discuss issues related to technical debt and share emerging practices used in software-development organizations.