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arXiv · 2606.07859

A Preliminary Model for Managing Technical Debt in an Agile Environment

Pedro E. Colla
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Abstract

This paper presents a preliminary model for managing involuntary technical debt in agile environments by formulating, in an integrated way, the dynamics among backlog, debt, velocity, and economic value. The work distinguishes initiated but unfinished functional debt from a simple defect back log and from rework, interprets productivity degradation as technical-debt interest, and derives the naive maximum-remediation policy in order to show its limitations against an intertemporal value-based decision. On this basis, a dynamic policy uk is proposed to balance new development and remediation; a decreasing marginal-value structure is incorporated; and the model is extended to discrete, inhomogeneous items. Exploratory validation through sensitivity analysis and MonteCarlo simulation shows behavior consistent with the economic intuition of the model. Finally, the limits of the formulation are made explicit: its macroscopic nature, its dependence on organizationally stable parameters, its assumption of intertemporal rationality, and its requirement of weak coupling among stories.

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Pedro E. Colla. 2026-06-05. A Preliminary Model for Managing Technical Debt in an Agile Environment. https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.07859

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