Last updated on Monday, October 06, 2025
@inproceedings{Njima2019IWSIB,
address = {New York, NY, USA},
author = {Mercy Njima and Serge Demeyer},
booktitle = {Proceedings {IWSiB 2019} (2nd {ACM} {SIGSOFT}
International Workshop on Software-Intensive
Business: Start-ups, Platforms, and Ecosystems)},
pages = {54--59},
publisher = {ACM},
title = {Value-based Technical Debt Management: An Exploratory
Case Study in Start-ups and Scale-ups},
year = {2019},
abstract = {Software start-ups face fierce competition in the
market forcing them to release their products quickly
and often under tough time constraints. To meet their
deadlines, start-ups take shortcuts in software
development leading to the accumulation of technical
debt. They are able to put their product in users
hands faster, get feedback, and improve at the
expense of quality issues in the long run. As a
start-up evolves through inception, stabilization and
growth this debt will have to be managed. Technical
debt management and software product line engineering
techniques have some similar benefits of increased
productivity and reduced time-to-market. Our aim is
to check whether software product line engineering
can be a candidate technique for start-ups to employ
in managing technical debt as a response to their
life-cycle phase goals and challenges. We conducted
expert interviews with nine start-up professionals to
identify the strategies applied in relation to
technical debt management and software product lines
engineering and other software engineering practices
in start-ups. By analyzing the responses from the
interviews we found that depending on the life-cycle
phase of the start-up software product line
engineering proved effective in managing technical
debt and helped the start-ups to advance through the
life-cycle phases.},
annote = {workshoppaper},
doi = {10.1145/3340481.3342739},
isbn = {978-1-4503-6854-4},
}