Context Studying the causes of technical debt (TD) could aid in TD prevention, thus easing the job of TD management. On the other hand, better understanding of the effects of TD could also aid in TD management by facilitating more informed decisions about incurring and paying off debt. Objective Create a deeper understanding, and confirming existing evidence, of the causes and effects of TD by collecting new evidence from real-world TD examples. Method InsighTD is a globally distributed family of industrial surveys on the causes and effects of TD. It is designed to run as a large-scale study based on continuous and independent replications in different countries. The survey instrument asks practitioners to describe in detail a real example of TD from their experience. We present in this paper the design of InsighTD, which has the primary goal of replication at a large-scale, with the results of the study in Brazil as a small part of the larger puzzle. Results The first iteration of the InsighTD survey, carried out in Brazil, yielded 107 responses. We identified a total of 78 causes and 66 effects, which confirm and also extend the current knowledge on causes and effects of TD. Then, we organized the identified set of causes and effects in probabilistic cause-effect diagrams. The proposed diagrams highlight the causes that can most contribute to the occurrence of TD as well as the most common effects that occur as a result of debt. Conclusion We intend to reduce the problem of isolated TD investigations that are not yet representative and build a continuous and generalizable empirical basis for understanding practical problems and challenges of TD.

中文翻译：

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从业者对技术债务概念及其因果的看法：全球工业调查家族的设计及其来自巴西的第一个结果

背景 研究技术债务 (TD) 的原因可以帮助预防 TD，从而简化 TD 管理的工作。另一方面，更好地了解 TD 的影响也可以通过促进关于发生和偿还债务的更明智的决策来帮助 TD 管理。目标 通过从真实世界的 TD 示例中收集新证据，加深对 TD 原因和影响的理解并确认现有证据。Method InsighTD 是一个全球分布的关于 TD 原因和影响的工业调查系列。它旨在作为基于不同国家连续和独立复制的大规模研究进行。调查工具要求从业者根据他们的经验详细描述 TD 的真实例子。我们在本文中介绍了 InsighTD 的设计，它的主要目标是大规模复制，巴西的研究结果只是更大难题的一小部分。结果 在巴西进行的 InsighTD 调查的第一次迭代产生了 107 份答复。我们总共确定了 78 个原因和 66 个结果，这证实并扩展了当前关于 TD 原因和影响的知识。然后，我们在概率因果图中组织了一组确定的因果关系。建议的图表突出显示了最可能导致 TD 发生的原因以及债务导致的最常见影响。结论 我们打算减少尚不具有代表性的孤立 TD 调查的问题，并为理解 TD 的实际问题和挑战建立一个连续和可概括的经验基础。