Paper Info
Title
Embracing Technical Debt, from a Startup Company Perspective
Abstract
Software startups are typically under extreme pressure to get to market quickly with limited resources and high uncertainty. This pressure and uncertainty is likely to cause startups to accumulate technical debt as they make decisions that are more focused on the short-term than the long-term health of the codebase. However, most research on technical debt has been focused on more mature software teams, who may have less pressure and, therefore, reason about technical debt very differently than software startups. In this study, we seek to understand the organizational factors that lead to and the benefits and challenges associated with the intentional accumulation of technical debt in software startups. We interviewed 16 professionals involved in seven different software startups. We find that the startup phase, the experience of the developers, software knowledge of the founders, and level of employee growth are some of the organizational factors that influence the intentional accumulation of technical debt. In addition, we find the software startups are typically driven to achieve a "good enough level," and this guides the amount of technical debt that they intentionally accumulate to balance the benefits of speed to market and reduced resources with the challenges of later addressing technical debt.
Year
DOI
Venue
2018
10.1109/ICSME.2018.00051
2018 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME)
Keywords
Field
DocType
Technical Debt,Startup,Software development
Codebase,Systems engineering,Computer science,Software,Technical debt,Industrial organization,Software development,New product development
Conference
ISSN
ISBN
Citations 
1063-6773
978-1-5386-7871-8
3
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.38
0
5
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Terese Besker1506.44
Antonio Martini29617.16
Rumesh Edirisooriya Lokuge330.38
Kelly Blincoe4268.67
Jan Bosch580788.13