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  • October 2016
  • Article
  • Journal of Systems and Software

Technical Debt and System Architecture: The Impact of Coupling on Defect-related Activity

By: Alan MacCormack and Daniel J. Sturtevant
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Abstract

Technical debt is created when design decisions that are expedient in the short-term increase the costs of maintaining and adapting this system in future. An important component of technical debt relates to decisions about system architecture. As systems grow and evolve, their architectures can degrade, increasing maintenance costs and reducing developer productivity. This raises the question if and when it might be appropriate to redesign (“refactor”) a system, to reduce what has been called “architectural debt.” Unfortunately, we lack robust data by which to evaluate the relationship between architectural design choices and system maintenance costs, and hence to predict the value that might be released through such refactoring efforts. We address this gap by analyzing the relationship between system architecture and maintenance costs for two software systems of similar size but with very different structures: one has a “Hierarchical” design, the other has a “Core-Periphery” design. We measure the level of system coupling for the 20,000+ components in each system and use these measures to predict maintenance efforts or “defect-related activity.” We show that in both systems, the tightly coupled Core or Central components cost significantly more to maintain than loosely coupled Peripheral components. In essence, a small number of components generate a large proportion of system costs. However, we find major differences in the potential benefits available from refactoring these systems, related to their differing designs. Our results generate insight into how architectural debt can be assessed by understanding patterns of coupling among components in a system.

Keywords

Technology Networks; Performance Efficiency; Software; Infrastructure

Citation

MacCormack, Alan, and Daniel J. Sturtevant. "Technical Debt and System Architecture: The Impact of Coupling on Defect-related Activity." Journal of Systems and Software 120 (October 2016): 170–182. (Received 31 May 2015. Revised 28 May 2016. Accepted 4 June 2016.)
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About The Author

Alan D. MacCormack

Technology and Operations Management
→More Publications

More from the Authors

    • 2021
    • Faculty Research

    Computer-Implemented Methods and Systems for Measuring, Estimating, and Managing Economic Outcomes and Technical Debt in Software Systems and Projects: US Patent 11,126,427 B2

    By: Daniel J. Sturtevant, Carliss Baldwin, Alan MacCormack, Sunny Ahn and Sean Gilliland
    • August 2021
    • Faculty Research

    A Note on Design Thinking

    By: Alan MacCormack, Caroline M. Elkins, Allison H. Mnookin, Leonard A. Schlesinger and Joyce J. Kim
    • November 2020
    • Journal of Product Innovation Management

    Disrupting the Disruptors or Enhancing Them? How Blockchain Re‐Shapes Two‐Sided Platforms

    By: Daniel Trabucchi, Antonella Moretto, Tommaso Buganza and Alan MacCormack
More from the Authors
  • Computer-Implemented Methods and Systems for Measuring, Estimating, and Managing Economic Outcomes and Technical Debt in Software Systems and Projects: US Patent 11,126,427 B2 By: Daniel J. Sturtevant, Carliss Baldwin, Alan MacCormack, Sunny Ahn and Sean Gilliland
  • A Note on Design Thinking By: Alan MacCormack, Caroline M. Elkins, Allison H. Mnookin, Leonard A. Schlesinger and Joyce J. Kim
  • Disrupting the Disruptors or Enhancing Them? How Blockchain Re‐Shapes Two‐Sided Platforms By: Daniel Trabucchi, Antonella Moretto, Tommaso Buganza and Alan MacCormack
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