Context . Technical debt (TD) prevention allows software practitioners to apply practices to avoid potential TD items in their projects. Aims . To uncover and prioritize, from the point of view of software practitioners, the practices that could be used to avoid TD items, the relations between these practices and the causes of TD, and the practice avoidance reasons (PARs) that could explain the failure to prevent TD. Method . We analyze data collected from six replications of a global industrial family of surveys on TD, totaling 653 answers. We also conducted a follow up survey to understand the importance level of analyzed data. Results . Most practitioners indicated that TD could be prevented, revealing 89 prevention practices and 23 PARs for explaining the failure to prevent TD. The article identifies statistically significant relationships between preventive practices and certain causes of TD. Further, it prioritizes the list of practices, PARs, and relationships regarding their level of importance for TD prevention based on the opinion of software practitioners. Conclusion . This work organizes TD prevention practices and PARs in a conceptual map and the relationships between practices and causes of TD in a Sankey diagram to help the visualization of the body of knowledge reported in this study.

Context: Knowing the effects of technical debt (TD) can support software development teams in the prioritization of TD items to pay off. However, little is known about the relations between the effects of TD and TD payment practices. Having this knowledge can provide valuable information for decision making about which payment practice can be applied given the presence of specific effects of TD. Aims: To investigate, from the point of view of software practitioners, (i) which TD payment practices have been used when certain effects of the presence of debt are felt in software projects and (ii) the reasons for not paying debt items despite the effects they are causing to the project. Method: We analyze quantitatively and qualitatively data collected from a survey with 432 practitioners across four countries. Results: Among the identified relations, the practice "code refactoring" is commonly used to pay debt items off when the effects "delivery delay" and "rework" are felt in software projects. On the other hand, when practitioners face the TD effects "low external quality" and "delivery delay", ，they commonly justify the non- payment of the debt items indicating the need of "focusing on short term goals". Conclusion: We organize the relationship between TD effects, and payment practices and reasons for not eliminating debt items. All this information is structured in an alluvial diagram, which can facilitate the visualization of the identified relations.

Context: Technical debt (TD) is a metaphor used to describe technical decisions that can give the company a benefit in the short term but possibly hurting the overall quality of the software in the long term. Objective: This study aims to characterize the current state of practices related to TD payment from the point of view of software practitioners. Method: We used a survey research method to collect and analyze - both quantitatively and qualitatively - a corpus of responses from a survey of 432 software practitioners from Colombia, Chile, Brazil, and the United States, as a part of the InsighTD project. Results: We were able to identify that refactoring (24.3%) was the main practice related to TD payment, along with improving testing (6.2%) and improve design (5.8%). Also, we identify that small-sized systems and big-sized systems, along with young systems (less than one year) tend to use more refactoring. As a part of these results, we also could identify that some practices do not eliminate the debt by itself, but support a favorable scenario for TD payment or prevention. Additionally, after comparing the three major TD types cited (code debt, test debt and design debt) we could discover an important similarity of TD payment practices between code debt and design debt. Lastly, we identified that no matter the cause leading to TD occurrence, refactoring remained the most common practice. Conclusion: Definition of practices related to TD payment is an essential activity for software development teams. Developing healthy software systems that can be maintained in the future requires that companies find the right approaches for TD payment.

Architectural Technical Debt (ATD) is a metaphor used to describe consciously decisions taken by software architects to accomplish short-term goals but possibly negatively affecting the long-term health of the system. However, difficulties arise when repayment strategies are defined because software architects need to be aware of the consequences of these strategies over others decisions in the software architecture. This article proposes REBEL, a semi-automated model-driven approach that exploits natural language processing, machine learning and model checking techniques on heterogeneous project artifacts to build a model that allows to locate and visualize the impact produced by the consciously injected ATD and its repayment strategy on the other architectural decisions. The technique is illustrated with a data analytics project in Colombia where software architects are unaware of the consequences of the repayment strategies. This proposal seeks to support teams of architects to make explicit the current and future impact of the ATD injected as a result of decisions taken, focusing on the architectural level rather than code level.

Tax fraud is the intentional act of lying on a tax return form with intent to lower one's tax liability. Under-reporting is one of the most common types of tax fraud, it consists in filling a tax return form with a lesser tax base. As a result of this act, fiscal revenues are reduced, undermining public investment.

Video games can play a vital part in a young child's education, particularly those that look to strengthen their spatial abilities. This study will look at a mixed gender group of 5 year olds from the Institución Educativa Julio Perez Ferrero focussing on the identification of signs to find the way out of a maze. This plays an important role in a childs sense of direction and finding the correct path, hence developing spatial skills. Results have shown that video game use improved the childrens abilities, albeit at differing speeds, to read signs and avoid enemies, such signs included both images and sounds. We discovered that the girls were more attentive at spotting signs and consider the use of virtual mazes to strengthen children's spatial skills highly effective, although implications and direction of this research are open to discussion.