Systems Engineering for the Digital Age

Chapter 19Technical Debt in the Engineering of Complex Systems

Ye Yang¹ and Dinesh Verma²

¹ Amazon.com Inc., New York, NY, USA

² Stevens Institute of Technology, School of Systems and Enterprises, Hoboken, NJ, USA

Introduction

We are living in an era where modern technologies have significantly impacted every aspect of human society. In the past, technological advancements were relatively simple and straightforward, primarily focusing on solving practical problems. In recent decades, systems have become increasingly complex and sophisticated, with a large number of interconnected components collaboratively serving for a long life span and have faced enormous challenges with high stakes to safety, security, and fairness of human life and society impact.

Examples of such systems include data‐intensive distributed systems, COTS‐intensive cyber‐physical systems, and the innovative applications of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) in domains across finance, defense, healthcare, transportation, etc. Such systems have the ability to play crucial roles in shaping and revolutionizing the way we live and work. The stake of design in such systems is extremely high. It is critical to consider their economic, societal, and ethical implications and to ensure such systems are used in a responsible and sustainable manner.

The metaphor of technical debt (TD) stems from and is widely adopted in the software engineering field, referring to short‐term compromises in engineering ...