| dc.description.abstract | Technical debt (TD) is an emerging concept in software engineering. TD has been widely spoken from the technical, financial, and organizational perspectives. However, it is crucial to understand that there could be a considerable psychological cost beyond those economic and technical downfalls. So, this study explores the technical debt from human perspectives, specifically developers’ morale and productivity. This thesis aims to explore how the occurrence and management of TD impact the developers’ morale and productivity. The impact of the occurrence of TD is studied based on the two aspects of TD, such as: ‘introducing TD’ and ‘criticism after introducing TD.’ Likewise, four aspects of TD, such as ‘review,’ ‘repaying TD,’ ‘praise after repaying TD,’ and ‘collaboration to pay TD,’ are considered to study the impact of management of TD on developers' morale and productivity. A qualitative research method was used to perform this research. Data were gathered by conducting semi-structured interviews with 11 software practitioners from different IT companies in Nepal and Norway. Thematic analysis using NVivo was performed to analyze the collected data. The results indicate that the occurrence of TD usually hurts both developers’ morale and productivity. However, exceptions apply to a few developers whose morale and productivity do not get affected because of the presence of TD. Although repaying technical debt is a tedious effort that hinders developers’ morale and productivity, other aspects of management of technical debt enhance productivity and morale. However, developers’ satisfaction or motivation and productivity raise after successfully repaying technical debt. This thesis concludes that TD, developers’ morale, and productivity are co-relateable and should be studied together. The results show that apart from the financial and technical aspects, developers’ morale is an essential human aspect of TD which can cost a higher interest in terms of reduced productivity in the future if not properly repaid. The introduction of TD and criticism for introducing TD both have negative impacts on morale and productivity. Team collaboration, the culture of praising each other, and review all contribute to managing TD, ultimately increasing the developers’ morale and productivity. On the other hand, developers do not like to be a part of repaying TD because it has detrimental impacts on their morale and productivity. | eng |