SPLASH '14 Workshop: Technical Debt

Workshop date:  Monday October 20, 2014, 8:30am - 5pm
Location:  SPLASH '14 Conference in Portland

Website Contents

• Workshop Overview
• How to join the Workshop
• Position Papers
• Extra material
• Workshop final report
• Workshop raw notes

Workshop Overview

This is the website for the SPLASH workshop on technical debt.

Technical debt is a term that was coined by Ward Cunningham in 1992 to explain the accidental complexity that is a side-effects of "going faster" in the development work on a large code base.

Technical debt is a popular and powerful metaphor for small teams, projects with very short development cycles, and teams working in agile ecosystems, but it can apply to development projects of any size or circumstances.

This workshop examined the sources of technical debt, especially in the world of big software engineering. What are the best practices for keeping technical debt under control? The workshop participants shared both academic and industrial experiences.

This workshop has some overlap with the SPLASH 2013 workshop on technical debt (see SPLASH 2013 technical debt workshop report for more information on what we discussed).

How to join the Workshop

Too late... the workshop has already been held. But you can read the workshop final report:

• Workshop final report

Some of the questions we asked before the workshop...

What are your experiences in dealing with technical debt? You can join in on the discussion.  Here is how you can become part of the workshop:

1. Contact one of the workshop organizers listed below.
2. Prepare a one-page "position paper" -- containing your ideas, questions, and experiences.  Send your position paper to mancl - AT - alcatel-lucent.com.  The deadline for position papers is August 26.
• A workshop position paper is optional, but we use the workshop position papers to help us plan the discussion. Here are some tips for your workshop paper:
• Your position paper might explain some of your personal experiences (positive and/or negative) with with design and coding problems leading to technical debt issues.
• Or, you could describe some of your own philosophy of design techniques for reducing the burden of technical debt.
• Finally, you could use your position paper to ask some questions -- some of the things that puzzle you about technical debt.

• Dennis Mancl (mancl - AT - alcatel-lucent.com)
• Bill Opdyke (opdyke - AT - acm.org)
• Steve Fraser (sdfraser - AT - acm.org)

Position Papers

None...

Extra material

Extra material (useful readings, links to books and articles on technical debt issues) will be posted here.

• "Technical Debt" article on the Portland Patterns Wiki site: http:/c2.com/cgi/wiki?WardExplainsDebtMetaphor.
• Philippe Kruchten, Robert L. Nord, Ipek Ozkaya, Joost Visser, "Technical debt in software development: from metaphor to theory," ACM SIGSOFT Engineering Notes, September 2012, pp. 36-38.
• Technical Debt online community website: http://www.ontechnicaldebt.com.