Technical Debt Indexes Provided by Tools: A Preliminary Discussion

Abstract

In software maintenance and evolution, it is important to assess both code and architecture in order to identify issues to be solved to improve software quality. Different tools provide some kind of index giving us an overall evaluation of a project to be used when managing its technical debt. In this paper, we outline how the indexes, that we call in general Technical Debt Indexes, provided by five different tools are computed. We describe their principal features and differences, what aspects they are missing, and we outline if (and how) the indexes take into account architectural problems that could have a major impact on the architectural debt. We show that the indexes rely on different information sources and measure different quantities.