Technical Debt and Challenges in Distributed Agile



This is about my article ‘Distributed Agile, Agile Testing and Technical Debt’ published in IEEE Software (Nov/Dec 2012). In this article, I have presented an interview I conducted with Johanna Rothman and Lisa Crispin in March 2012, when I met with them at Belgium Testing Days 2012.

The goal of my interview was to understand their perspectives on technical debt in agile teams with specific reference to agile testing and distributed teams. Here is the list of questions I wanted to ask in my interview.

1. ‘Technical Debt’ is a common term used by agile teams. What are the implications of ‘Technical Debt’ on Agile Testing Teams? Or what does it mean (or how does it matter) to Agile Testing Teams?
2. What are the impacts of ‘Inadequate Technical Debt Management (of everyone else in projects)’ on Agile Testing Teams?
3. Should Agile Testing Teams be aware of ‘Technical Debt’ and participate in discussions related to Technical Debt? How can they contribute?
4. Test Automation is one among the core focus areas of Agile Testing Teams. How can they understand and manage ‘Technical Debt’ related to automation design or scripts? Is it happening in the industry? What has been your experience?
5. In this context, what are the challenges do you see in distributed teams? How can these challenges be addressed? Any experience?

My interview with them lasted for about 40 minutes.  I had a memorable interaction with them during the conference as well as over email until April-2012 to finalize their responses.

In this article, I have included my thoughts on the need for geographically distributed teams to become more aware and aligned to effectively manage technical debt.

You can download the PDF file of this article from https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6336723

Write to me if you have any difficulties in getting this article.

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