Reframing Technical Debt (Dagstuhl Perspectives Workshop 24452)

Abstract

Technical Debt has undeniably become part of the everyday vocabulary of software engineers and has shaped the way both industry and academia think of tradeoffs made in software development, accounting for both value and cost: taking shortcuts to expedite software release (value) at the potential risk of higher cost for changes in the long term (cost). This trade-off is not to be taken lightly, as Technical Debt is considered by many software organizations to be the "silent killer" of software projects. To avoid being caught off guard, the industry is increasingly incorporating Technical Debt Management practices into their development processes. The research community has also produced a substantial body of knowledge on the topic of Technical Debt. 
However, the industry requires more capable software tools that can manage both legacy and AI-generated code and specifically target Technical Debt. In addition, the industry needs practices and techniques that better support understanding the fundamental tradeoff: the value from incurring Technical Debt against Technical Debt’s long-term costs. Progress on understanding this tradeoff is hindered due to a lack of high-quality datasets, as well as the comparatively small research effort focused on human and social aspects of Technical Debt. 
Despite significant early progress in developing a common understanding of the concept of Technical Debt and code-related aspects, the research community and the software-intensive industry need to re-engage. Focusing on how Technical Debt Management is currently practiced and where to focus future research efforts was the goal of this Dagstuhl Perspectives Workshop 24452. The workshop brought together researchers, software tool vendors, and software practitioners to address open challenges and reframe the field of Technical Debt with a concrete and actionable manifesto. 
The Dagstuhl Report documents the goals, format, and several discussions held during the workshop. The report also includes some of the outputs of the workshop, as well as the abstracts of the talks given by the participants. A key output of the workshop is a report that summarized a manifesto including values, beliefs, and principles of managing technical debt, titled Reframing Technical Debt and released as a separate document in the Dagstuhl Manifestos series.