Different Debt: An Addition to the Technical Debt Dataset and a Demonstration Using Developer Personality

These are the slides for a talk at the 7th International Conference on Technical Debt (TechDebt). The research and paper was done by Lorenz Graf-Vlachy and Stefan Wagner.

Background: The “Technical Debt Dataset” (TDD) is a comprehen- sive dataset on technical debt (TD) in the main branches of more than 30 Java projects. However, some TD items produced by Sonar- Qube are not included for many commits, for instance because the commits failed to compile. This has limited previous studies using the dataset. Aims and Method: In this paper, we provide an addition to the dataset that includes an analysis of 278,320 commits of all branches in a superset of 37 projects using Teamscale. We then demonstrate the utility of the dataset by exploring the relationship between developer personality by replicating a prior study. Results: The new dataset allows us to use a larger sample than prior work could, and we analyze the personality of 111 developers and 5,497 of their commits. The relationships we find between developer personality and the introduction and removal of TD differ from those found in prior work. Conclusions: We offer a dataset that may enable future studies into the topic of TD and we provide additional insights on how developer personality relates to TD.

Transcript

1. 1 Different Debt: An Addition to the Technical Debt Dataset and a Demonstration Using Developer Personality Lorenz Graf-Vlachy, TU Dortmund University, University of Stuttgart Stefan Wagner, Technical University of Munich, University of Stuttgart TechDebt 2024
2. Technical Debt and Personality 2 Technical Debt
3. Original Study – Theory 3 Extraversion + Technical Debt Agreeableness – Conscientiousness – Emotional stability + Emotional stability + Prevention focus + – Promotion focus + Narcissism
4. Original Study – Results 4 Extraversion + Technical Debt Agreeableness – Conscientiousness – Emotional stability + Openness to experience + Prevention focus + – Promotion focus + Narcissism
5. Master branches of 29 Apache open-source projects Analyzed by SonarQube Technical Debt per commit Technical Debt Dataset 5 By Lenarduzzi, Saarimäki, and Taibi
6. SonarQube requires a complete build of commit for an analysis. → Incomplete data for about 60 % of the commits Limitations of the Technical Debt Data Set 6
7. Extending the Technical Debt Dataset 7 38 projects https://figshare.com/articles/dataset/ Different_Debt_An_Addition_to_the_Technical_Debt_Dataset_and_a_Demonstration_Using_Developer_Personality/24550840 All findings
8. Replication with Extended Dataset 8 Extended Dataset with added and removed findings Extracting commits GitHub Survey developers to measure personality Panel regression 5,497 commits of 111 developers 211 full personality profiles
9. Replicated Study – Results 9 Extraversion + Technical Debt Agreeableness – Conscientiousness – Emotional stability + Openness to experience + Prevention focus + – Promotion focus + Narcissism
10. Fine-grained dataset for further TD studies Other studies based on the Technical Debt Dataset could be replicated using our open data. Shows need for further studies and replications regarding personality and TD Implications and Conclusions 10