Familiarity, Common Causes and Effects of Technical Debt: A Replicated Study in the Saudi Software Industry

Technical debt (TD) poses a significant risk in the software industry, representing the compromises made during software development that result in long-term consequences. To facilitate the management of TD, it is important to explore the causes of TD and the effects of the presence of TD on software projects. While the concept of TD has been investigated in several countries, no study has explored TD in the context of Saudi Arabia. In this paper, we aim to investigate the familiarity of the TD concept within the Saudi software practitioners and identifying the common causes and effects of TD in the Saudi software industry. We replicated a global survey called InsighTD, using the same survey instrument and the analysis procedure but collecting the data from software practitioners in Saudi Arabia. A total of 48 Saudi software practitioners completed the survey. The study findings indicate that the TD concept is not well recognized among the Saudi software practitioners (50% of the survey respondents have never heard of it before). Additionally, we identify the common causes and effects of TD from the perspective of Saudi software practitioners. The top causes of TD were tight-release deadlines, work pressure, lack of experience, and inappropriate project planning. On the other hand, the top effects of TD were increased maintenance effort/cost, low software quality, and delayed delivery of new versions. In conclusion, our findings support previous research regarding the most common TD causes and effects. In addition, they highlight some important factors in the Saudi software industry.