ToolsTechDebt 2021

Call for Tools

The 4th International Conference on Technical Debt will be held virtually (originally in Madrid, Spain), on May 19-21, 2021, collocated with ICSE 2021.

Technical debt is a metaphor that software developers and managers increasingly use to communicate key trade-offs between time to market and quality issues.

While other software engineering disciplines—such as software maintenance and evolution, refactoring, software quality, and empirical software engineering—have produced results relevant to managing technical debt, none of them alone suffice to model, manage, and communicate the different facets of the design trade-off problems involved in managing technical debt. Similarly, while many software engineering practices can be used to get ahead of technical debt, organizations struggle with managing technical debt routinely and strategically.

Tools play a critical role in understanding the management, monitoring, and measurement of technical debt in real-world situations. We invite researchers, practitioners and organizations to showcase new techniques, methods, and tools that can aid practitioners and decision makers in these critical tasks to participate in TechDebt 2021.

Submission types

Tools track accepts two types of submissions:

• Tool presentation papers (up to 5 pages): describe innovative and original tools addressing technical debt issues or aiming at the management of technical debt. Submitted tool papers will be peer-reviewed and accepted submissions will be published in the conference proceedings.
• Extended abstract (1-2 pages): describe innovative and original initial tools idea for which there is not yet a prototype in order to obtain early feedback. Extended abstracts provide practitioners with an opportunity to showcase a tool-specific perspective. Extended abstracts are not peer reviewed and will not be published in the conference proceedings.

Suggested content for both types of submissions, the program committee and chairs will look for:

• The alignment to the overarching technical debt theme of the conference.
• How the purpose of the tool is addressed and how validation experiences with practitioners have been planned or conducted (if applicable)

Submission process

In EasyChair, on top of specifying the type of submission, indicate how you will participate in the conference session (you may select one or both):

• Panel participant: In the panel discussion we will engage participants and the audience on how the showcased tools help address technical debt challenges.
• Tool demonstration: If you propose to showcase your tool or product from your organization, please let us know your requirements *(such as space, equipment, …). A dedicated demo session will be part of the Tools track.

All accepted papers will also have the possibility to bring a poster during the conference.

Papers and extended abstract must be submitted electronically via the TechDebtConf2021 EasyChair site. Submissions must be in PDF and conform to the ACM formatting guidelines applied for ICSE 2021. Submissions may not exceed the number of pages specified above (including all text, references and figures). Purchases of additional pages in the proceedings are not allowed.

Formatting instructions are available at https://www.acm.org/publications/proceedings-template for both LaTeX and Word users.

The official publication date is the date the proceedings are made available in the ACM or IEEE Digital Libraries. This date may be up to two weeks prior to the first day of ICSE 2021. The official publication date affects the deadline for any patent filings related to published work.

Accepted papers must be presented in person at the conference by one of the authors. Accepted submissions will be published as part of the ICSE co-located events proceedings.

Important dates

• January 27 January 31, 2021: Tool presentation papers (up to 5 pages) (extended)
• February 24, 2021: Notification of acceptance or rejection
• March 22, 2021: Camera-ready papers
• March 30, 2021: Extended abstracts (up to 2 pages)
• April 10, 2021: Notification of acceptance or rejection for Extended abstracts
• May 23–24, 2021: TechDebt Conference

Further inquiries

All inquiries may be directed to track chairs:
Marcus Ciolkowski: marcus.ciolkowski@qaware.de
Valentina Lenarduzzi: valentina.lenarduzzi@lut.fi