The Negative Implications of Technical Debt on Software Startups: What they are and when they surface

Technical Debt (TD) refers to suboptimal technical solutions for expediting software development in the short term, but entails extra work in future. Although TD provides opportunities for startups (e.g., to cope with limited resources, faster time to market), it can have some negative impacts throughout the startup evolution. While previous studies have investigated the effects of TD, there is little understanding of the conditions under which TD effects can surface. In this paper, we conducted a multiple case study to explore the effects of TD incurred in the early startup stage, and when these effects are felt later in the evolution of the startup. First, we interviewed 17 participants (6 CTO/CEO founders, and 11 developers) from five software startups. In addition, we analyzed public documents related to the five software startups. Based on the results, we identified six TD effects, along with the time (i.e., the startup evolution stage) and the conditions under which they are felt by software startup teams. Our results can help startup teams to understand not just the TD effects, but also when they are likely to surface and their relationship to customer dissatisfaction. CCS CONCEPTS • Software and its engineering $\rightarrow$ Software design tradeoffs; Software product lines; Maintaining software