Context. Technical Debt (TD) refers to short-term beneficial software solutions that impede future changes, making TD management essential. However, establishing a TD management (TDM) process is one of the most pressing concerns in practice. Goal. We plan to identify which previously researched TDM approaches are feasible in practice and what typical challenges emerge to create a guideline for establishing a TDM process. Method. We replicated our previously published action research study by conducting five workshops introducing TDM with two teams from different companies. To determine the feasibility of TDM approaches, we presented the teams with approaches for various TD activities and let them decide which to adopt. Overall, we conducted 19 workshops and retrospectives, analyzing 108 meetings (96 hours) over a 30 -month period. Results. The adopted TD prevention strategies and documentation were similar in all teams. The teams utilized their respective backlogs and created a new backlog item type for TD, incorporating similar attributes such as interest, contagiousness, a resubmission date, and reminders to discuss drawbacks and risks. However, they used different prioritization approaches and deviating repayment methods. The teams had to overcome similar challenges during the establishment, which we list in this paper. Conclusions. We identified the TDM approaches used by all teams as a starting point for best practices. For challenges, we provided solutions or identified them as research gaps. Issue tracking system vendors should implement TD issue types employing the identified attributes. Finally, we created a white paper for practitioners to establish a TDM process based on our results.

Cognitive biases are predictable, systematic errors in human reasoning. They influence decision-making in various areas, including architectural decision-making, where architects face many choices. For example, anchoring can cause architects to unconsciously prefer the first architectural solution that they came up with, without considering any solution alternatives. Prior research suggests that training individuals in debiasing techniques during a practical workshop can help reduce the impact of biases. The goal of this study was to design and evaluate a debiasing workshop with individuals at various stages of their professional careers. To test the workshop's effectiveness, we performed an experiment with 16 students and 20 practitioners, split into control and workshop group pairs. We recorded and analyzed their think-aloud discussions about improving the architectures of systems they collaborated on. The workshop improved the participants' argumentation when discussing architectural decisions and increased the use of debiasing techniques taught during the workshop. This led to the successful reduction of the researched biases' occurrences. In particular, anchoring and optimism bias occurrences decreased significantly. We also found that practitioners were more susceptible to cognitive biases than students, so the workshop had a more substantial impact on practitioners. We assume that the practitioners' attachment to their systems may be the cause of their susceptibility to biases. Finally, we identified factors that may reduce the effectiveness of the debiasing workshop. On that basis, we prepared a set of teaching suggestions for educators. Overall, we recommend using this workshop to educate both students and experienced practitioners about the typical harmful influences of cognitive bias on architectural decisions and how to avoid them.

Context. Architecture maintainability smells indicate software quality problems and suggest necessary architecture refactorings. However, there are numerous names for a single smell, including synonyms and subclasses, and the number keeps increasing. This situation leads to confusion and difficulty in identifying the underlying problems. Objective. To address this challenge, we want to organize the existing smells. Method. We collect smell names through a systematic literature review, followed by a four-step data analysis leading to a taxonomy of maintainability smells, comprising smell characteristics, categories, detection methods, and causes. Results. We found 549 architecture smell names in 189 references, from which we identified 318 maintainability smell names. We derived the distinguishing characteristics and reduced the list to 19 essential maintainability smells. Conclusions. Our taxonomy provides an overview of essential maintainability smells, making future research and discussions more manageable. Moreover, the identified synonyms make existing research comparable, and the characteristics, causes, and detection methods provide a framework for classifying future smells.

Technical Debt (TD) is a metaphor for technical problems that are not visible to users and customers but hinder developers in their work, making future changes more difficult. TD is often incurred due to tight project deadlines and can make future changes more costly or impossible. Project Management usually focuses on customer benefits and pays less attention to their IT systems’ internal quality. TD prevention should be preferred over TD repayment because subsequent refactoring and re-engineering are expensive. This paper evaluates a framework focusing on both TD prevention and TD repayment in the context of agile-managed projects. The framework was developed and applied in an IT unit of a publishing house. The unique contribution of this framework is the integration of TD management into project management. The evaluation was performed as a comparative case study based on ticket statistics and two structured surveys. The surveys were conducted in the observed IT unit using the framework and a comparison unit not using the framework. The first survey targeted team members, the second one IT managers. The evaluation shows that in this IT unit the TAP framework led to a raised awareness for the incurrence of TD. Decisions to incur TD are intentional, and TD is repaid timelier. Unintentional TD incurred by unconscious decisions is prevented. Furthermore, better communication and better planning of the project pipeline can be observed. We provide an insight into practitioners’ ways to identify, monitor, prevent and repay TD. The presented framework includes a feasible method for TD prevention despite tight timelines by making TD repayment part of project management.

Software engineers need relevant and up-to-date architectural knowledge (AK), in order to make well-founded design decisions. However, finding such AK is quite challenging. One pragmatic approach is to search for AK on the web using traditional search engines (e.g. Google); this is common practice among software engineers. Still, we know very little about what AK is retrieved, from where, and how useful it is. In this paper, we conduct an empirical study with 53 software engineers, who used Google to make design decisions using the Attribute-Driven-Design method. Based on how the subjects assessed the nature and relevance of the retrieved results, we determined how effective web search engines are to find relevant architectural information. Moreover, we identified the different sources of AK on the web and their associated AK concepts.

Technical Debts (TD) are problems of the internal software quality. They are often contracted due to tight project deadlines, for example quick fixes and workarounds, and can make future changes more costly or impossible. TD prevention should be more important than TD repayment, because subsequent refactoring and reengineering is usually more expensive than building the right solution from the beginning. While there are numerous works on TD repayment, solutions for TD prevention are understudied. This paper evaluates a framework that focuses on both TD prevention and TD repayment. It was developed by and applied in an IT unit of a publishing house. The unique contribution of this framework is the integration of TD management into project management. The evaluation was carried out by a study based on ticket statistics and a structured survey with participants from the observed IT unit and a comparison unit. The evaluation shows that the adoption of this framework leads to a raised awareness for the contraction of TD. This results in benefits like more rational discussions and decisions, TD prevention and timelier repayment of TD tickets.