Theses and Dissertations

Zadia Codabux

Issuing Body

Mississippi State University

Advisor

Williams, Byron J.

Committee Member

Bradshaw, Gary L.

Committee Member

Swan, J. Edward, II

Committee Member

Cantor, Murray

Date of Degree

12-9-2016

Document Type

Dissertation - Open Access

Major

Computer Science

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

College

James Worth Bagley College of Engineering

Department

Department of Computer Science and Engineering

Abstract

Software development companies strive to produce high-quality software. In commercial software development environments, due to resource and time constraints, software is often developed hastily which gives rise to technical debt. Technical debt refers to the consequences of taking shortcuts when developing software. These consequences include making the system difficult to maintain and defect prone. Technical debt can have financial consequences and impede feature enhancements. Identifying technical debt and deciding which debt to address is challenging given resource constraints. Project managers must decide which debt has the highest priority and is most critical to the project. This decision-making process is not standardized and sometimes differs from project to project. My research goal is to develop a framework that project managers can use in their decision-making process to prioritize technical debt based on its potential impact. To achieve this goal, we survey software practitioners, conduct literature reviews, and mine software repositories for historical data to build a framework to model the technical debt decision-making process and inform practitioners of the most critical debt items.

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11668/19579

Comments

questionnaires||interviews||bayesian networks||predictive analytics||prioritization||decision making||technical debt

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