In software development, people often talk about technical debt – the legacy embedded in our technical environment that ultimately affects users. The phenomenon that Tomas Gustavsson, Senior Lecturer in Information systems and Project Management at Karlstad Business School, has examined is called process debt, and his recent article in the Journal of Systems and Software was awarded Best Paper 2025.
What is technical debt really?
– Technical debt can arise when a system is built using a programming language that worked well at the time, but over the years has proven to have shortcomings, making changes more difficult and more expensive, explains Tomas Gustavsson. Every day you continue patching an old system, the debt grows.
Technology itself is not the only area where debt can accumulate. Debts that are not technical are referred to as non‑technical debts, and process debt is one of them. Process debt means continuing to follow a process that once worked well—but no longer fits current needs.
You mention different types of process debt in your research – what can they consist of?
– Imagine a small company with only ten employees where all decisions must go through the manager, Gustavsson explains. As the company grows, more and more problems emerge because the manager no longer has time to make every decision. The debt grows as long as the decision‑making process remains unchanged.
Processes that no longer align with how work is actually carried out constitute one form of process debt. In research, four additional types have been identified:
- Synchronization debt, meaning difficulties in coordinating work between groups or departments
- Roles debt, meaning unclear mandates and responsibilities between roles
- Documentation debt, meaning processes are undocumented or incorrectly documented
- Infrastructure debt, meaning systems that do not support the processes
What results has your research produced?
– In qualitative studies, it became clear that process debt causes various types of problems, says Gustavsson. These include issues related to job satisfaction, overwork, and dissatisfaction. I therefore developed a survey-based instrument to assess levels of different types of process debt and job satisfaction. The results show a clear connection between them, and what affects job satisfaction the most is when processes no longer fit the way people work, and roles debt, that is, unclear mandates and responsibilities.
In what ways can the results be useful, and for whom?
– I would say the most important contribution is that organizations can now use the instrument to measure different types of process debt within their operations. The fact that roles debt is such a major issue is also important for organizations working with software development to understand and take seriously. New methods and frameworks that are popular to implement often introduce new roles, and when these are added, ambiguities frequently arise regarding how they fit into the existing organization.
The article was published in the Journal of Systems and Software — what does that mean for you and Karlstad Business School?
– The journal is highly regarded in both computer science and information systems. The fact that the article won Best Paper 2025 demonstrates the high quality of our research. My co-authors, Ovais Ahmad and Hina Saeeda, are from Computer Science at Karlstad University, so it’s particularly gratifying that the article is entirely a ‘Karlstad product’.
