RDEL #24: How does technical debt impact software engineering morale?

This week we look at how technical debt impacts the morale - and productivity - of engineering teams.

Welcome back to Research-Driven Engineering Leadership. Each week, we pose an interesting topic in engineering leadership, and apply the latest research in the field to drive to an answer.

🥂 Happy New Years! Our team enjoyed a great holiday season, and we’re ready to tackle the new year ahead. Let 2024 be the year of great engineering leadership!

As teams set off to meet their lofty 2024 product goals, we wanted to start the year off by thinking about what bottlenecks slow down a team’s ambitious endeavors. Few topics are more relevant to engineering velocity than technical debt, which is our focus for the week. In this edition, we’ll look at technical debt’s unique impact on software engineering morale (and productivity).

The context

Technical debt is the trade-off between short term delivery and long term stability. It is an important and valuable tool, but it is also one that comes with consequences. As technical debt accrues, it creeps up in various ways within a software system, eventually slowing important processes like development cycles, build times, and deployments.

It turns out that it’s not just the software that is impacted by an increase in technical debt. Researchers have now started looking beyond the technical consequences to the human consequences, and have found evidence to show that technical debt impacts developer emotions, and motivations. In fact, while technical debt can create a short-term increase in productivity, it can have a larger negative impact on productivity in the long run. This week, we dive into one of those studies and ask: how does technical debt impact software engineering morale (and productivity)?

The research

Researchers Terese Besker, Hadi Ghanbari, Antonio Martini, and Jan Bosch studied how morale is influenced by technical debt, as well as how that morale is correlated to time waste from technical debt. They first interviewed and surveyed 15 engineers on their experience with technical debt. Next, they used a survey of 32 software engineers to understand broader themes in technical debt. Finally, researchers collected 473 data points from engineers to understand the perceived sense of “wasted time” from technical debt.

The results of the developer survey

Using the results of the developer survey, researchers concluded that:

• Technical debt has a negative influence on developers morale because it reduces their overall confidence and hinders their progress.

• The management of technical debt has a positive influence on developers’ morale because it is associated with positive progress a higher sense of gratitude. (Note: we cover how gratitude impacts software engineers here.)

Finally, researchers used the 473 data points to compute the average amount of perceived time wasted through technical debt. They attempted to correlate the average amount of time wasted by each respondent against and their answers to the questions above. They found that the only moderate correlation was between average percentage of wasted time and the hindrance of making progress. This indicates that the more time is wasted, the more engineers feel like their progress is hindered by TD. Otherwise, more or less technical debt does not correlate to how strongly people felt.

The application

The study above is unique in that it shows how technical debt does not just impact technical implementation, but also morale. Technical debt makes engineers feel hindered in their progress, and reduces their overall confidence. Productivity is also impacted: it’s not just that processes take longer due to technical debt, but the engineers building solutions feel less confident, thus compounding the impact.

The research also highlighted good news - technical debt is often thought of as a “team” burden (as opposed to an individual burden), and paying back technical debt pays dividends in team gratitude and morale

A theoretical framework for how technical debt management improves developer morale

Regardless, technical debt is an important and often necessary tool to meeting product deadlines. Teammates rarely feel guilt for introducing technical debt, often because they understand and agree with the trade-offs the team is making. The key is to take on that debt thoughtfully, and have a plan to repay it frequently.

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Wishing you a week of minimal technical debt and high morale. As always, happy Research Monday! 🎉

Lizzie

From the Quotient team