Main Goal
It refers to guidelines to support software enginneers (software practicioners and researchers) in managing TD items. The TDM Guidelines are structured in parts that can be adopted by team members in Technical Debt Management, such as TDM Macro Activities and Practical Actions (i.e., activities, tasks, and recommendations to perform such actions).
It is expected that software enginners and software organizations can use the TDM Guidelines to support them in structuring actions and technologies that can be adopted to deal with TD. Therefore, the TDM Guideline aim to provide support in managing the associated risks associated with the maintenance and evolution of their software products.
Structure of the TDM Guidelines
The structure of the TDM Guidelines combines phases, TDM macro activities, and practical actions (i.e., activities, tasks, and recommendations).
- TDM Macro activities: represent set of practical actions that should be performed to deal with TD items aiming to minimize the risks related to internal quality software. These essential macro activities are: TD Prevention, TD Identification, TD Measurement, TD Prioritization, TD Repayment, TD Documentation, and TD Monitoring.
- Practical Actions: it refers to Activities, Tasks, and Recommendations that can be performed iteratively, following the project cycles.
The TDM Guidelines also includes advice on some artifacts (TDM artifacts) and technologies (TDM technologies) that can be adopted to support the performing of the practical actions.
- TDM Artifacts: It refers instruments that can be adopted by team members when performing the Activities, Tasks, and Recommendations.
- TDM Technologies: It refers to specific or SE technologies (i.e., strategies, methods, SE practices, and tools) that can be used to perform the practical actions to manage TD. Each TDM technology provides support to specific macro activities and/or TD types. The TDM technologies recommended in the TDM Guidelines should be adopted according to macro activities and TD types that need to be dealt with in the project.
How use it?
All stakeholders can use these guidelines to support decision-making on actions concerned with TDM in software projects.
Then, the team should (1) define which TDM macro activities should be adopted in their software project to deal with TD items, considering the project’s context. Next, they should (2) read and (3) consider the practical actions (activities, tasks, and recommendations) provided in the guidelines of each defined macro activity. Then, the understanding of the practical actions should be aligned among all the team.
The TDM Guidelines do not aim to replace the everyday software development activities or the original methods in more traditional software projects. Nevertheless, these guidelines can be (3) combined with the existing activities, methods, and technologies already in use, mainly those related to internal quality software. Finally, the team should (4) perform their established practical actions to deal with TD items in the project.
If you would like to have a version of the TDM Guidelines in a PDF format, please download it here.
Please contact us if you would like more information about the TDM Guidelines for establishing a partnership with the researchers responsible for this tecnology. Contact information is available here.