Technical debt management automation: State of the art and future perspectives

Context: Technical debt (TD) refers to non-optimal decisions made in software projects that may lead to short-term benefits, but potentially harm the system's maintenance in the long-term. Technical debt management (TDM) refers to a set of activities that are performed to handle TD, e.g., identification or measurement of TD. These activities typically entail tasks such as code and architectural analysis, which can be time-consuming if done manually. Thus, substantial research work has focused on automating TDM tasks (e.g., automatic identification of code smells). However, there is a lack of studies that summarize current approaches in TDM automation. This can hinder practitioners in selecting optimal automation strategies to efficiently manage TD. It can also prevent researchers from understanding the research landscape and addressing the research problems that matter the most. Objectives: The main objective of this study is to provide an overview of the state of the art in TDM automation, analyzing the available tools, their use, and the challenges in automating TDM. Methods: We conducted a systematic mapping study (SMS), following the guidelines proposed by Kitchenham et al. From an initial set of 1086 primary studies, 178 were selected to answer three research questions covering different facets of TDM automation. Results: We found 121 automation artifacts that can be used to automate TDM activities. The artifacts were classified in 4 different types (i.e., tools, plugins, scripts, and bots); the inputs/outputs and interfaces were also collected and reported. Finally, a conceptual model is proposed that synthesizes the results and allows to discuss the current state of TDM automation and related challenges. Conclusion: The research community has investigated to a large extent how to perform various TDM activities automatically, considering the number of studies and automation artifacts we identified. Nonetheless, more research is needed towards fully automated TDM, specially concerning the integration of the automation artifacts.