2020/09/22 by Jesper Olsson, Erik Risfelt, Olsson, Jesper +7
Computer Science · Psychology · #Creativity in Education and Neuroscience #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Open Source Software Innovations #Software Engineering (cs.SE) #Software Engineering Research #Software Engineering Techniques and Practices
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2009.10660
openalex publication_date 2020/09/22 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Software engineering is a human activity. Despite this, human aspects are\nunder-represented in technical debt research, perhaps because they are\nchallenging to evaluate.\n This study's objective was to investigate the relationship between technical\ndebt and affective states (feelings, emotions, and moods) from software\npractitioners. Forty participants (N = 40) from twelve companies took part in a\nmixed-methods approach, consisting of a repeated-measures (r = 5) experiment (n\n= 200), a survey, and semi-structured interviews.\n The statistical analysis shows that different design smells (strong\nindicators of technical debt) negatively or positively impact affective states.\nFrom the qualitative data, it is clear that technical debt activates a\nsubstantial portion of the emotional spectrum and is psychologically taxing.\nFurther, the practitioners' reactions to technical debt appear to fall in\ndifferent levels of maturity.\n We argue that human aspects in technical debt are important factors to\nconsider, as they may result in, e.g., procrastination, apprehension, and\nburnout.\n