Towards a Mapping of Software Technical Debt onto Testware

Technical Debt (TD) is a metaphor used to explain the negative impacts that sub-optimal design decisions have in the long-term perspective of a software project. Although TD is acknowledged by both researchers and practitioners to have strong negative impact on Software development, its study on Testware has so far been very limited. A gap in knowledge that is important to address due to the growing popularity of Testware (scripted automated testing) in software development practice.In this paper we present a mapping analysis that connects 21 well-known, Software, object-oriented TD items to Testware, establishing them as Testware Technical Debt (TTD) items. The analysis indicates that most Software TD items are applicable or observable as TTD items, often in similar form and with roughly the same impact as for Software artifacts (e.g. reducing quality of the produced artifacts, lowering the effectiveness and efficiency of the development process whilst increasing costs). In the analysis, we also identify three types of connections between software TD and TTD items with varying levels of impact and criticality. Additionally, the study finds support for previous research results in which specific TTD items unique to Testware were identified. Finally, the paper outlines several areas of future research into TTD.

I. Introduction

Technical debt (TD) has become a generally acknowledged concept in industrial practice that describes the increased costs of development and maintenance of sub-optimal Software [1]. TD is also associated with interest that is the cost of adding, changing or removing code from the sub-optimal solution compared to the optimal one [2]. An analysis of the collective global TD, performed by Gartner in 2010, estimated its cost to $500 billion US and that this figure could double by the end of 2015 [3]. Because of the financial impact of TD, the concept has received attention from academia [2], [4]–[7]. However, despite research to suggest the presence of TD also in Testware [8], [9], TD in Testware is still an unexplored research area.