Acknowledgments

Many colleagues attended the Managing Technical Debt (MTD) workshops over the years that provided an opportunity to exchange ideas and improve practice. The idea of the technical debt landscape grew out of a working session at the Third International Workshop on Technical Debt at the International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) in Zurich in 2012. A week-long Dagstuhl Seminar on Managing Technical Debt in Software Engineering in 2016 produced a consensus definition for technical debt, a draft conceptual model, and a research roadmap. Paris Avgeriou and Carolyn Seaman, early pioneers in managing technical debt, joined us in organizing events and guiding the community. Tom Zimmermann provided generous support from ICSE as the MTD workshop series transformed into a conference. He helped make the inaugural edition of the TechDebt Conference in 2018 a success where researchers, practitioners, and tool vendors could explore theoretical and practical techniques that manage technical debt.

We are grateful to Robert Eisenberg, Michael Keeling, Ben Northrop, Linda Northrop, Eltjo Poort, and Eoin Woods, who shared their experience and wisdom in the form of sidebars. We also appreciate the software engineers, developers, project managers, and people on the business side of the organization for sharing their stories and practices from the trenches.

Special thanks to Len Bass and Hasan Yasar, who contributed their expertise to the chapter on technical debt and production. Kevin Sullivan presented the net present value (NPV) and real options example at our very first workshop on technical debt in 2010, and Steve McConnell refined it in subsequent discussions.

Thanks go to the experts for their thorough and helpful reviews of different drafts of the manuscript that helped make this a better book. These include Paris Avgeriou, Felix Bachmann, Len Bass, Stephany Bellomo, Robert Eisenberg, Neil Ernst, George Fairbanks, Shane Hastie, James Ivers, Clemente Izurieta, Rick Kazman, Nicolas Kruchten, Jean-Louis Letouzey, Ben Northrop, Linda Northrop, Eltjo Poort, Chris Richardson, Walker Royce, Carolyn Seaman, Eoin Woods, and Hasan Yasar.

At the SEI, James Ivers, head of the SEI’s Architecture Practices initiative, provided steady and persistent support for this effort. The SEI has been involved in technical debt research for many years, and the work of our colleagues helped shape our thinking on the topic with contributions from Felix Bachmann, Stephany Bellomo, Nanette Brown, Neil Ernst, Ian Gorton, Rick Kazman, Zach Kurtz, and Forrest Shull. Linda Northrop led the SEI program that was instrumental in the development of the field of software architecture and in influencing our ideas about architecture in the technical debt landscape. She was also our mentor throughout the journey. Jim Over, Anita Carleton, and Paul Nielsen supported transitioning the work in managing technical debt to practice, including this book. Thanks to Kurt Hess for working with us to transform many of the concepts into the figures that illustrate the book. Tamara Marshall-Keim was invaluable in helping us untangle and clearly communicate complex concepts. Her knowledge of the domain and editing expertise made significant improvements to the content of the book.

At the University of British Columbia, we thank graduate students Erin Lim, Ke Dai, and Jen Tsu Hsu, who went boldly into the wild world of software and system development and investigated what technical debt actually looked like. And more recently another student, Mike Marinescu, helped us with the book production.

At Pearson Education, Kim Spenceley and Chris Guzikowski provided guidance and support. Our thanks also go to our copy editor, Kitty Wilson, production editor, Lori Lyons, and the team of production professionals.

Finally, we thank our families and friends for their encouragement and support.