Profiling Developers Through the Lens of Technical Debt
It addresses technical debt management for software developers, but is incremental as it applies existing methods to new data.
This study characterized how developers manage technical debt by analyzing code smells and refactorings from a public dataset, profiling developers to recognize roles and estimate coding maturity and technical debt tolerance.
Context: Technical Debt needs to be managed to avoid disastrous consequences, and investigating developers' habits concerning technical debt management is invaluable information in software development. Objective: This study aims to characterize how developers manage technical debt based on the code smells they induce and the refactorings they apply. Method: We mined a publicly-available Technical Debt dataset for Git commit information, code smells, coding violations, and refactoring activities for each developer of a selected project. Results: By combining this information, we profile developers to recognize prolific coders, highlight activities that discriminate among developer roles (reviewer, lead, architect), and estimate coding maturity and technical debt tolerance.