Racing Against the Clock: Exploring the Impact of Scheduled Deadlines on Technical Debt
Background: Technical Debt (TD) describes suboptimal software development practices with long-term consequences, such as defects and vulnerabilities. Deadlines are a leading cause of the emergence of TD in software systems. While multiple aspects of TD have been studied, the empirical research findings on the impact of deadlines are still inconclusive.
Aims: This study investigates the impact of scheduled deadlines on TD. It analyzes how scheduled deadlines affect code quality, commit activities, and issues in issue-tracking systems.
Method: We analyzed eight Open Source Software (OSS) projects with regular release schedules using SonarQube. We analyzed 12.3k commits and 371 releases across these eight OSS projects. The study combined quantitative metrics with qualitative analyses to comprehensively understand TD accumulation under scheduled deadlines.
Results: Our findings indicated that some projects had a clear increase in TD as deadlines approached (with above 50% of releases having increasing TD accumulation as deadlines approached), while others managed to maintain roughly the same amount of TD. Analysis of commit activities and issue tracking revealed that deadline proximity could lead to increased commit frequency and bug-related issue creation.
Conclusions: Our study highlights that, in some cases, impending deadlines have a clear impact on TD. The findings pinpoint the need to mitigate last-minute coding rushes and the risks associated with deadline-driven TD accumulation.
Thu 19 JunDisplayed time zone: Athens change
15:30 - 17:00 | ProcessShort Papers, Emerging Results / Research Papers / AI Models / Data at Glass Room Chair(s): Muhammad Ali Babar School of Computer Science, The University of Adelaide | ||
15:30 15mTalk | On the Prevalence and Usage of Commit Signing on GitHub: A Longitudinal and Cross-Domain Study Research Papers Anupam Sharma Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar, Sreyashi Karmakar Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar, Gayatri Priyadarsini Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar, Abhishek Bichhawat Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar Pre-print | ||
15:45 10mTalk | Toward Inclusive Low-Code Development: Detecting Accessibility Issues in User Reviews Short Papers, Emerging Results Mohammadali Mohammadkhani Sharif University of Technology, Sara Zahedi Movahed Sharif University of Technology, Hourieh Khalajzadeh Deakin University, Australia, Mojtaba Shahin RMIT University, Khuong Tran Hoang Deakin University Pre-print | ||
15:55 10mTalk | Towards Requirements Engineering for RAG Systems Short Papers, Emerging Results | ||
16:05 15mTalk | Towards User-Centred Design of AI-Assisted Decision-Making in Law Enforcement AI Models / Data Vesna Nowack Imperial College London, Dalal Alrajeh Imperial College London, Carolina Gutierrez Munoz University of Bath, Katie Thomas University of Bath, William Hobson University of Bath, Patrick Benjamin University of Oxford, Catherine Hamilton-Giachritsis University of Bath, Tim Grant Aston University, Juliane Kloess University of Edinburgh, Jessica Woodhams University of Birmingham Pre-print | ||
16:20 15mTalk | Trust vs. Control: Comparing Flexible and Restrictive Hybrid Work Policies in Two Software Companies Research Papers Darja Šmite Blekinge Institute of Technology, Nils Brede Moe Sintef, Panagiota Chatzipetrou Örebro University, Povilas Gadliauskas Independent, Per Kristian Helland Storebrand, Anastasiia Tkalich SINTEF File Attached | ||
16:35 15mTalk | Racing Against the Clock: Exploring the Impact of Scheduled Deadlines on Technical Debt Research Papers Joshua Aldrich Edbert University of Saskatchewan, Zadia Codabux University of Saskatchewan, Roberto Verdecchia University of Florence Pre-print | ||
16:50 10mTalk | Recommendation systems in e-commerce applications with machine learning methods Short Papers, Emerging Results Aneta Poniszewska-Maranda Institute of Information Technology, Lodz University of Technology, Magdalena Pakula Institute of Information Technology, Lodz University of Technology, Bozena Borowska Institute of Information Technology, Lodz University of Technology | ||