A Study of Factors that Lead Development Teams to Incur Technical Debt in Software Projects

Context: Several technical debt (TD) management strategies have been proposed, but considering actions that could prevent the insertion of TD in the first place is not yet a common practice. This is a point that deserves investigation because it is expected that TD prevention could be sometimes "cheaper" than TD repayment. Besides, TD prevention also helps other TD management activities, especially in catching inexperienced developers' 'not-so-good' solutions. Thus, while TD management is an important topic, it is also worthwhile to understand the motivations and factors that could lead development teams to incur different types of debt. Objective: To identify causes that lead to the occurrence of TD, investigate if these causes occur in isolation or in combination, understand if TD can be prevented, and investigate, in terms of effort, if it is better to prevent debt, or incur it and pay it off later. Method: An interview based case study was performed with software practitioners. The results were formulated based on a synthesis of the text fragments coded for each response. Results: We identified 57 causes that lead a development team to incur debt. For the majority of TD types, these causes occur in combination. It was also indicated that debt can be prevented, and it is better to work on prevention activities than to pay off debt later. Conclusion: Results allowed us to identify 57 causes that lead a development team to incur debt. These causes mostly occur in combination, not in isolation. It was also indicated that debt can be prevented, and it would be better to work on prevention activities than to pay off debt later.