# “The Second Vice is Lying, the First is Running into Debt.” Antecedents and Mitigating Practices of Social Debt: an Exploratory Study in Distributed Software Development Teams

> Social debt is the accumulated coordination and communication liability of a team. Tracking it alongside technical debt may help distributed teams spot problems that code metrics do not show.

- Venue: HICSS 54, 6826–6835 (2021)
- Transfer: Social debt is the accumulated coordination and communication liability of a team. Tracking it alongside technical debt may help distributed teams spot problems that code metrics do not show.
- Contribution: My role: co-author.
- Authors: Dreesen, T., Hennel, P., Rosenkranz, C., Kude, T.
- URL: https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/items/dc38f351-a668-45a2-adcf-aff8f2a524d4

## Study

An exploratory case study of eight distributed agile software development teams in two organisations, during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study identifies antecedents of social debt and practices that mitigate it.

## Why it matters in practice

Remote teams can accumulate coordination and communication liabilities that issue trackers and code may not show. The mitigating practices give team leads starting points.