A Systematic Mapping Study on Technical Debt in Microservices

In recent years, the development of high-quality systems with a microservices architecture has drawn the attention of professionals and researchers. Software systems with a microservices architecture are relatively new; the study of technical debt in the context of Microservices Architecture has not been thoroughly addressed in the literature, so the characteristics of technical debt in these systems are not known. This study aims to describe the characteristics of technical debt in systems with microservices architecture as identified in the literature. Through a systematic mapping study, 12 primary studies were identified and analyzed. We found eight types of technical debt and one type of technical debt unique to microservices-based systems. Architecture Debt and Code Debt stand out as the most frequently reported types of debt in the literature among the eight types. Design and implementation activities were also identified as those with the highest number of cases of technical debt, followed by migration activities where technical debt also arises as a result of migrating from a monolithic system to a system with microservices. With this work it is expected that software engineers know the technical debt present in systems based on microservices in order to modify their management practices for the development of said systems. In addition, areas of opportunity have been identified to deepen the study of this type of technical debt.