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Technical Debt in Hardware Systems and Elements

This paper explores the application of the technical debt metaphor to hardware-centric systems. We specifically evaluate how technical debt impacts hardware development and how it can best be handled. Technical debt management can help make better decisions by tracking the debt that is building up in hardware elements and objectively assessing when correcting technical debt items is more cost-effective than allowing them to continue to charge interest in the form of lower productivity and higher risk. Technical debt management has shown great value in the software development field, and recent applications show that the concept can be applied to other engineering disciplines, including systems engineering. There has been less research into technical debt in hardware systems, but many of the same concerns - dependencies, complexity, patterns and conventions, integration, and non-functional requirements – apply. In this paper, we will describe applications of known technical debt types, such as architectural debt, implementation debt, configuration debt, modeling and simulation debt, quality debt, integration debt and testing debt, to hardware centric environments. Then, we will analyze a set of hardware-centric programs for concrete examples of technical debt and their impact. Based on this information, we will expand the definition of System Technical Debt and recommend approaches for identifying, managing, and eliminating technical debt in hardware-centric systems.