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Understanding the Impact of Technical Debt in Coding and Testing: An Exploratory Case Study

Technical Debt (TD) refers to the long-term consequences of shortcuts taken during different phases of software development life cycle. Lack of attention to monitoring and managing testing and development debt can contribute to unexpectedly large cost overruns and severe quality issues in software development projects. This paper describes a case study conducted with an industry partner to explore the impact of TD in coding and testing. By conducting (i) a semi-structured interview, and (ii) a quantitative survey, we found that (1) the status of TD is largely project-independent, (2) we could not reject that there is no significant difference between the percentage of existing TD and the required time for reducing this TD in testing and development teams, (3) there is a statistically significant difference between the perceived influence of reducing TD on productivity increase in testing and development teams, (4) team member's experience has impact on the existing percentage of TD and influences productivity increase that is caused by reducing TD, (5) allocating more resources such as time, budget, and infrastructure is considered a potential solution for reducing TD.