When-to-Release Decisions in Consideration of Technical Debt

Shortening release duration is essential in creating competitive products in iterative software development. However, short-term expedients (e.g., code compromises, delayed change requests, etc.) can have long term effects on the maintenance of the software. There are multifaceted factors that influenced the effective management of technical debt in organizations. In this position paper, we propose a formulation of technical debt in the context of (software) product releases, specifically when-to-release decisions. The potential competitive advantage through faster delivery needs to be balanced against the delivery of the overall business values and the potentially incurred technical debt. Pro-active analysis of the estimated impact of various release scenarios is expected to provide insights and essential inputs for actual decision-making process. This paper also evaluates a real-world case study.