Technical Debt: From Metaphor to Theory and Practice

Kruchten, Philippe; Nord, Robert L.; Özkaya, İpek

doi:10.1109/ms.2012.167

articleIEEE SoftwareOct 22, 2012Closed access

Technical Debt: From Metaphor to Theory and Practice

PKPhilippe Kruchten RLRobert L. Nord İÖİpek Özkaya

University of British Columbia · Software Engineering Institute · +1 more institution

Indexed incrossref

Abstract

The metaphor of technical debt in software development was introduced two decades ago to explain to nontechnical stakeholders the need for what we call now "refactoring." As the term is being used to describe a wide range of phenomena, this paper proposes an organization of the technical debt landscape, and introduces the papers on technical debt contained in the issue.

Citation impact

684

total citations

FWCI: 83.76
Percentile: 100%
References: 5

Citations per year

Authors

PK
Philippe KruchtenCorresponding
University of British Columbia
RL
Robert L. Nord
Software Engineering Institute, Engineering and Software System Solutions (United States)
İÖ
İpek Özkaya
Software Engineering Institute, Engineering and Software System Solutions (United States)

Topics & keywords

Topics

Software Engineering Techniques and Practices100%
Software Engineering Research100%
Open Source Software Innovations99%

Keywords

Technical debt
Code refactoring
Metaphor
Debt
Computer science
Software engineering
Software
Corporate debt

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