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Main Authors: Graetsch, Ulrike M., Hoda, Rashina, Khalazjadeh, Hourieh, Shahin, Mojtaba, Grundy, John
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.18219
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author Graetsch, Ulrike M.
Hoda, Rashina
Khalazjadeh, Hourieh
Shahin, Mojtaba
Grundy, John
author_facet Graetsch, Ulrike M.
Hoda, Rashina
Khalazjadeh, Hourieh
Shahin, Mojtaba
Grundy, John
contents Context: There is an increase in the investment and development of data-intensive (DI) solutions, systems that manage large amounts of data. Without careful management, this growing investment will also grow associated technical debt (TD). Delivery of DI solutions requires a multidisciplinary skill set, but there is limited knowledge about how multidisciplinary teams develop DI systems and manage TD. Objective: This research contributes empirical, practice based insights about multidisciplinary DI team TD management practices. Method: This research was conducted as an exploratory observation case study. We used socio-technical grounded theory (STGT) for data analysis to develop concepts and categories that articulate TD and TDs debt management practices. Results: We identify TD that the DI team deals with, in particular technical data components debt and pipeline debt. We explain how the team manages the TD, assesses TD, what TD treatments they consider and how they implement TD treatments to fit sprint capacity constraints. Conclusion: We align our findings to existing TD and TDM taxonomies, discuss their implications and highlight the need for new implementation patterns and tool support for multidisciplinary DI teams.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_18219
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Managing Technical Debt in a Multidisciplinary Data Intensive Software Team: an Observational Case Study
Graetsch, Ulrike M.
Hoda, Rashina
Khalazjadeh, Hourieh
Shahin, Mojtaba
Grundy, John
Software Engineering
Context: There is an increase in the investment and development of data-intensive (DI) solutions, systems that manage large amounts of data. Without careful management, this growing investment will also grow associated technical debt (TD). Delivery of DI solutions requires a multidisciplinary skill set, but there is limited knowledge about how multidisciplinary teams develop DI systems and manage TD. Objective: This research contributes empirical, practice based insights about multidisciplinary DI team TD management practices. Method: This research was conducted as an exploratory observation case study. We used socio-technical grounded theory (STGT) for data analysis to develop concepts and categories that articulate TD and TDs debt management practices. Results: We identify TD that the DI team deals with, in particular technical data components debt and pipeline debt. We explain how the team manages the TD, assesses TD, what TD treatments they consider and how they implement TD treatments to fit sprint capacity constraints. Conclusion: We align our findings to existing TD and TDM taxonomies, discuss their implications and highlight the need for new implementation patterns and tool support for multidisciplinary DI teams.
title Managing Technical Debt in a Multidisciplinary Data Intensive Software Team: an Observational Case Study
topic Software Engineering
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.18219