TD Pulse: Assessing the Systematic Management of Technical Debt

Journal article, 2023

Technical Debt requires the management of several technical and non-technical aspects: process, organization, tools, etc. Software companies must identify where TD is not well managed and where to improve. Based on ten years of research and practice, we have created an effective approach, TD Pulse, to assess Technical Debt Management in large software companies and find critical improvement areas. The approach was used by 232 and evaluated by more than 200 practitioners in three large companies, including Siemens and Zenseact. The results show that our approach is valuable and lightweight. We also share lessons learned from the whole assessment experience.