EFFECT OF TECHNICAL DEBT ON SOFTWARE QUALITY: MEDIATING ROLE OF CODE MAINTAINABILITY AND MODERATING ROLE OF PROJECT SIZE

Abstract

This research is on the effects of technical debt on the quality of the software and the mediating variable of code maintainability and moderating variable of project size in the software development projects in Hyderabad and Jamshoro. The survey design selected was quantitative, cross-sectional survey design, on which 200 software professionals gathered data on developers, engineers, and project managers. Technical debt, code maintainability, software quality, and project size measurement scales were borrowed in previous validated studies and implemented on PLS-SEM. The findings indicate that the direct and indirect impact of technical debt on the quality of software is negative, which proves the mediating role. Furthermore, project size also plays a major moderating role with bigger projects having more adverse negative effect. The analysis of reliability, convergent, and discriminant validity shows that the measurement model is strong. These results indicate that systematic technical debt management, code refactoring and maintainability-oriented practices are essential in improving software quality. The study makes a theoretical contribution, by incorporating mediation and moderation processes within the software engineering research and also offers practical advice to software companies when trying to deal with the technical debt in an appropriate manner.