Common causes and effects of technical debt in Costa Rica: InsighTD survey replication

Murillo Quintana, María Isabel; Pacheco Hernández, Alexia; López Herrera, Gustavo; Marín Raventós, Gabriela; Guzmán Benavides, Julio César

Common causes and effects of technical debt in Costa Rica: InsighTD survey replication

Fecha

2021-10

Tipo

comunicación de congreso

Autores

Murillo Quintana, María Isabel

Pacheco Hernández, Alexia

López Herrera, Gustavo

Marín Raventós, Gabriela

Guzmán Benavides, Julio César

Resumen

Technical debt is a concept used to describe technical decisions that can benefit companies in the short term but can produce costs and software quality issues in the long term. Technical debt management can help enterprise profitability, sustainability, and the software industry's credibility. This paper presents a replication of the InsighTD survey (a globally distributed family of industrial surveys on causes and effects of TD), focusing on Costa Rica and comparing other regional countries. In total, 145 practitioners from the Costa Rican IT industry participated. Results show that the leading cause of technical debt is not technical (not only in Costa Rica but also in the region). On the other hand, the main effects reported are delivery delay and general dissatisfaction of the parties involved. A comparative study of InsighTD survey results in various countries is also included.