Software companies that develop their products on a basis of service-oriented architecture (SOA) can expect various improvements as a result of choreography. Current choreography practices, however, are not yet used extensively in the embedded systems domain even though SOA is increasingly used in this domain. The objective of this study is to identify current features of the use of choreography in the embedded systems domain for practitioners and researchers by systematically analysing current developments in the scientific literature, strategies for choreography adaption, choreography specification and execution types, and implicit assumptions about choreography. To fulfil this objective, a systematic literature review of scientific publications that focus on the use of choreography in the embedded systems domain was carried out. After screening, 48 publications were selected as primary studies and analysed using thematic synthesis. The main results of the study showed that there are differences in how choreography is used in embedded and non-embedded systems domain. In the embedded systems domain, it is used to capture the service interactions of a single organisation, while, for example, in the enterprise systems domain it captures the service interactions among multiple organisations. Additionally, the results indicate that the use of choreography can lead to improvements in system performance and that the languages that are used for choreography modelling in the embedded systems domain are insufficiently expressive to capture the complexities that are typical in this domain. The study results facilitate the work of practitioners by allowing them to make informed decisions about the applicability of choreography in their organisations.Comment: 39 pages, 3 figures, 20 table

This article presents technical debt (TD) impediments, decision factors, enabling practices, and actions diagrams for TD management in agile software projects. By analyzing diagrams, professionals can avoid the pitfalls, and increase their capacity, for better TD management.

Background: There is a growing body of knowledge on Technical Debt (TD) in recent years. This knowledge provides various explanations of the term and suggests different remedies for it. However, the knowledge is yet to be validated in software development processes. Aims: The objective of this study is twofold. First, to get empirical insight on the understanding and the use of the TD concept in Serbian IT industry. Second, to contribute towards precise conceptualization of the TD concept. Method: We conducted a national-wide survey to collect feedback from industry practitioners. The survey is a part of InsighTD-an international initiative to investigate causes and effects of TD. Results: In total, 93 responses were collected, mostly from developers. Results indicate that the concept of TD is not widely accepted for use by the industry, only 35% of practitioners have practical experiences with projects that explicitly considered or managed TD. The most common types of TD are: code, test and design debt that together account for 61% of all reported cases. The archetypal TD case is caused by a tight schedule and resulted with non-optimal solutions that are difficult to evolve and in constant need of rework. Conclusions: Implications are at one hand for academics, who should consider TD as a topic for their curriculums since the results revealed that novice developers are unfamiliar with the concept. At the other hand, industry practitioners have a well aligned understanding of the TD concept, which is consistent with TD literature. However, we perceive that the wider use of the existing tools and techniques for managing TD can significantly help practitioners to deal with the top three occurring TD types.

Background: The concept of technical debt (TD) describes a phenomenon that impacts software projects and makes them difficult to manage. In recent years, various techniques and best practices in terms of TD management were proposed and although important on its own this knowledge must be complemented with a broader comprehension of what causes TD and what are the effects of TD. This paper presents a replication of the InsighTD survey—a globally distributed family of industrial surveys on causes and effects of TD—and thus amplifies the InsighTD reach and expands its knowledge base. Objective: The research presented in this paper gives insight on the state of practice and understanding of the TD concept alongside with data on causes and effects of TD in the Serbian IT industry. Method: A nation-wide survey, as a part of the InsighTD initiative, was conducted in Serbia in order to obtain feedback from software industry practitioners. Results: In total 93 practitioners from the Serbian IT industry filled out the survey. The results indicate that the concept of TD is broadly distributed, but at the same time it is not widely accepted for use (only 35% of participants had some sort of practical experiences with projects that were TD aware). The top cited causes were: deadlines, ineffective project management, lack of experience, test not performed and misconduct. On the other side the most common effects of TD were: low maintainability, increased effort, rework and low external quality. Conclusion: The research presented in this paper confirms the original study findings that deadlines are the top cited cause of TD. It also identifies new causes of TD in the context of InsighTD, with misconduct being one of the most cited ones. Regarding the effects of TD this research differs in most of the top 10 identified effects from the original study but confirms the occurrence of some effects most cited.