Quantitative Analysis of the Effects of Technical Debt Accumulation on Long-Term Software Maintainability Using Longitudinal Case Studies of Open-Source Projects
Keywords:
Technical debt, Software maintainability, Longitudinal analysis, Open-source projects, Software metrics, Code complexityAbstract
Technical debt (TD) represents the long-term cost incurred by prioritizing quick software releases over sound engineering practices. While prior studies have established its negative effects, empirical insights into how TD accumulates and affects long-term maintainability are still fragmented. This paper presents a quantitative, longitudinal analysis across multiple mature open-source software (OSS) projects. By examining repositories over time, we assess the correlation between TD growth and maintainability degradation. The study leverages metrics such as code complexity, issue resolution time, and commit frequency. Results reveal that sustained TD accumulation leads to a measurable decline in maintainability, often surfacing as increased bug density and reduced development velocity. Our findings provide actionable insights for engineering teams seeking to manage TD in evolving codebases.
References
Alves, Nelson S. R., Christoph Ypma, and Arie van Deursen. "Towards a Better Understanding of Code Technical Debt: A Case Study on SonarQube." 2016 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME), 2016, pp. 501–505.
Curtis, Bill, Jens J. Mitchell, and Yehuda S. Sivo. "A Business Case for Technical Debt Management." The Cutter IT Journal, vol. 25, no. 1, 2012, pp. 5–10.
Ernst, Neil A., Stephany Bellomo, Ipek Ozkaya, Robert L. Nord, and Philippe Kruchten. "Measure It? Manage It? Ignore It? Software Practitioners and Technical Debt." Proceedings of the 2015 10th Joint Meeting on Foundations of Software Engineering, 2015, pp. 50–60.
Fontana, Francesca A., Roberto Roveda, and Marco Zanoni. "Technical Debt in Open Source Projects: An Exploratory Study on Apache Commons." Proceedings of the 2016 42nd Euromicro Conference on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications (SEAA), 2016, pp. 367–374.
Guo, Yu, and Carolyn Seaman. "A Portfolio Approach to Technical Debt Management." Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on Managing Technical Debt, 2011, pp. 31–34.
Kruchten, Philippe, Robert Nord, and Ipek Ozkaya. "Technical Debt: From Metaphor to Theory and Practice." IEEE Software, vol. 29, no. 6, 2012, pp. 18–21.
Li, Zazheng, Paris Avgeriou, and Peng Liang. "A Systematic Mapping Study on Technical Debt and Its Management." Journal of Systems and Software, vol. 101, 2015, pp. 193–220.
Lim, Eewei, Carolyn Seaman, and Norman V. Chervany. "An Empirical Study of the Impact of Technical Debt on Software Quality." Empirical Software Engineering, vol. 20, no. 6, 2015, pp. 1548–1576.
Potdar, Ajeet, and Dhaval Shroff. "Exploratory Study of Technical Debt in Open Source Software." International Journal of Computer Applications, vol. 131, no. 7, 2015, pp. 1–7.
Seaman, Carolyn, and Yu Guo. "Measuring and Monitoring Technical Debt." Advances in Computers, vol. 82, 2011, pp. 25–46.
Tom, Emilie, Aybüke Aurum, and Ross Vidgen. "An Exploration of Technical Debt." Journal of Systems and Software, vol. 86, no. 6, 2013, pp. 1498–1516.
Zazworka, Natalia, Mikael Shaw, and Forrest Shull. "Investigating the Impact of Design Debt on Software Quality." Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on Managing Technical Debt, 2011, pp. 17–23
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2022 A.J. Molnar (Author)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
