Pitfalls and Solutions for Technical Debt Management in Agile Software Projects

As technical debt (TD) management balances short-term and long-term goals, having information on the impediments, decision factors, enabling practices, and actions (IDEA) related to TD management can support software teams in improving their ability to effectively manage debt items. This article presents TD IDEA Diagrams for TD management in agile software projects. The diagrams are grounded in reports from 274 practitioners from six countries. They organize practices for TD prevention, monitoring, and repayment, as well as the impediments for applying them. By analyzing the diagrams, professionals can avoid the pitfalls, and increase their capacity, for better TD management.