A systematic literature review on Technical Debt prioritization: Strategies, processes, factors, and tools

Software companies need to manage and refactor Technical Debt issues. Therefore, it is necessary understand if when refactoring of should be prioritized with respect developing features or fixing bugs. The goal this study investigate the existing body knowledge in software engineering what prioritization approaches have been proposed research industry. We conducted a Systematic Literature Review 557 unique papers published until 2020, following consolidated methodology applied engineering. included 44 primary studies. Different for prioritization, all having different goals proposing optimization regarding criteria. measures capture only small part plethora factors used prioritize qualitatively practice. present an impact map such factors. However, there lack empirical validated set tools. observed that preliminary no consensus on important are how measure them. Consequently, we cannot consider current conclusive. In paper, therefore outline directions future investigations.