Increasing, not Diminishing : Investigating the Returns of Highly Maintainable Code
(2024) 7th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Technical Debt, TechDebt 2024, co-located with the International Conference on Software Engineering, ICSE 2024 p.21-30- Abstract
Understanding and effectively managing Technical Debt (TD) remains a vital challenge in software engineering. While many studies on code-level TD have been published, few illustrate the business impact of low-quality source code. In this study, we combine two publicly available datasets to study the association between code quality on the one hand, and defect count and implementation time on the other hand. We introduce a value-creation model, derived from regression analyses, to explore relative changes from a baseline. Our results show that the associations vary across different intervals of code quality. Furthermore, the value model suggests strong non-linearities at the extremes of the code quality spectrum. Most importantly, the... (More)
Understanding and effectively managing Technical Debt (TD) remains a vital challenge in software engineering. While many studies on code-level TD have been published, few illustrate the business impact of low-quality source code. In this study, we combine two publicly available datasets to study the association between code quality on the one hand, and defect count and implementation time on the other hand. We introduce a value-creation model, derived from regression analyses, to explore relative changes from a baseline. Our results show that the associations vary across different intervals of code quality. Furthermore, the value model suggests strong non-linearities at the extremes of the code quality spectrum. Most importantly, the model suggests amplified returns on investment in the upper end. We discuss the findings within the context of the “broken windows” theory and recommend organizations to diligently prevent the introduction of code smells in files with high churn. Finally, we argue that the value-creation model can be used to initiate discussions regarding the return on investment in refactoring efforts.
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- author
- Borg, Markus LU ; Pruvost, Ilyana ; Mones, Enys and Tornhill, Adam
- organization
- publishing date
- 2024-04
- type
- Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding
- publication status
- published
- subject
- keywords
- business impact, maintainability, mining software repositories, source code quality, technical debt
- host publication
- Proceedings - 2024 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Technical Debt, TechDebt 2024
- pages
- 10 pages
- publisher
- Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
- conference name
- 7th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Technical Debt, TechDebt 2024, co-located with the International Conference on Software Engineering, ICSE 2024
- conference location
- Lisbon, Portugal
- conference dates
- 2024-04-14 - 2024-04-15
- external identifiers
-
- scopus:85183820741
- ISBN
- 9798400705908
- DOI
- 10.1145/3644384.3644471
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- id
- 1a107eba-07e8-4f96-89f4-81c3b69559bc
- date added to LUP
- 2025-01-14 14:18:13
- date last changed
- 2025-04-04 14:50:00
@inproceedings{1a107eba-07e8-4f96-89f4-81c3b69559bc,
abstract = {{<p>Understanding and effectively managing Technical Debt (TD) remains a vital challenge in software engineering. While many studies on code-level TD have been published, few illustrate the business impact of low-quality source code. In this study, we combine two publicly available datasets to study the association between code quality on the one hand, and defect count and implementation time on the other hand. We introduce a value-creation model, derived from regression analyses, to explore relative changes from a baseline. Our results show that the associations vary across different intervals of code quality. Furthermore, the value model suggests strong non-linearities at the extremes of the code quality spectrum. Most importantly, the model suggests amplified returns on investment in the upper end. We discuss the findings within the context of the “broken windows” theory and recommend organizations to diligently prevent the introduction of code smells in files with high churn. Finally, we argue that the value-creation model can be used to initiate discussions regarding the return on investment in refactoring efforts.</p>}},
author = {{Borg, Markus and Pruvost, Ilyana and Mones, Enys and Tornhill, Adam}},
booktitle = {{Proceedings - 2024 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Technical Debt, TechDebt 2024}},
isbn = {{9798400705908}},
keywords = {{business impact; maintainability; mining software repositories; source code quality; technical debt}},
language = {{eng}},
pages = {{21--30}},
publisher = {{Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)}},
title = {{Increasing, not Diminishing : Investigating the Returns of Highly Maintainable Code}},
url = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3644384.3644471}},
doi = {{10.1145/3644384.3644471}},
year = {{2024}},
}