Interdisciplinary effects of technical debt in companies with mechatronic products — a qualitative study

Digitalization of products and production systems requires a fusion of mechatronic disciplines, where interfaces between mechanical, electrical, and software engineering are inevitable. The increasingly rapid pace of innovations in mechatronic systems triggers decisions being taken under time and cost pressure. At times, compromises in technical solutions are made, neglecting their long-term damage to the system. Technical debt (TD), a concept from software engineering, refers to short-term benefits that lead to long-term negative consequences, e.g., in the form of more difficult maintainability or evolvability. This also applies to mechatronic systems, yet the knowledge of TD characteristics and correlations in the interdisciplinary life cycle has only received little attention. This first comprehensive survey investigates TD in mechatronics systematically and across sectors. 50 experts, of whom 42% hold positions as department heads, from 21 renowned companies and 10 sectors in the German-speaking region supported this study with real scenarios where TD caused damage to their system. 94 informative TD incidents that were classified into twelve TD types were recorded, of which 2/3 have not yet been eliminated and posed a potential risk to the system. TD emerges most frequently in the first three stages of the life cycle, where the consequences rarely remain isolated at their source but are forwarded to later phases and disciplines in the life cycle. In contrast to the research focus in software engineering, the multi-domain analysis of mechatronic TD issues reveals that software engineers are most burdened by Requirements TD and Infrastructure TD in the interdisciplinary environment.