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Johannes Holvitie

TUCS Department for the doctoral studies: University of Turku, Department of Information Technology

Admitted to TUCS GP on 1.6.2012

Graduate project title:

Technical Debt Management as a Factor in Sustainable and Efficient Software Development

Graduate project abstract:

Technical debt is a term used to describe the outcome of actions made in favor of some development driving aspects at the cost of others. For example, implementing a set of functional requirements in a preset time period might require deviation from non-functional quality requirements. Similarly to financial debt, this short-term gain from timely delivery is an advantage if the organization is capable of managing the accompanying debt. While negligence results to incurring interest payments in the form of declining efficiency and finally unsustainable development.

Management of technical debt is rather a new research area. It is primarily interested in integrating technical debt management into software development via making related information available to various decision making processes. In order to achieve this, the obstacles hindering technical debt information production need to be removed: technical debt type classification, interdependence and structure, frequencies and locations of appearance, resolution and assessment of principle and interest, amongst others.

By actively taking part into research on the aforementioned areas, a deep understanding of technical debt is pursued. Additionally, studies on software development methods and their efficiencies are considered the key to revealing existing practices and principles with technical debt governance capabilities. This knowledge is then used to study the relationship between technical debt management and software development efficiency by discovering new governance techniques and enhancements to the existing capabilities in the form of well defined technical debt management.

Supervisors:

Mikko-Jussi Laakso (University of Turku, Department of Information Technology)

Ville Leppänen (University of Turku, Department of Information Technology)

Tapio Salakoski (University of Turku, Department of Information Technology)

Latest publications:

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