Adopting DevOps Paradigm in Technical Debt Prioritization and Mitigation

Abstract

The constantly growing amount of software in use, accompanied by huge amount of technical debt, gradually raises concern in the industry. New technologies and software development processes become yet another degree of freedom boosting the complexity. As the software development and delivery techniques evolve, technical debt perspective should follow. Taking into account all software artefacts enabling value delivery to customers, embracing DevOps paradigm and its holistic focus on software development lifecycle, the strategy presented in this paper enabled stabilization of a large telecommunication software system after a set of consecutive complex merges. The research question of this paper looks for evidence whether prioritization of technical debt mitigation efforts bring a faster return on investment. A 2-year-long case study focused on technical debt prioritization and mitigation that was conducted on this software system resulted in improved quality and stabilization of feature development efforts (cost and time based). Therefore, the tangible gains from applying this approach comprise over 50% decrease in stability issues, improved screening by over 30%, and 6 times better predictability of delivery time (reducing allocation of stabilization effort and time).