What's behind tight deadlines? Business causes of technical debt

Abstract: What are the business causes behind tight deadlines? What drives the prioritization of features that pushes quality matters to the back burner? We conducted a survey with 71 experienced practitioners and did a thematic analysis of the open-ended answers to the question: `Could you give examples of how business may contribute to technical debt?'' Business-related causes were organized into two categories: pure-business and business/IT gap, and they were related totight deadlines' and `features over quality', the most frequently cited management reasons for technical debt. We contribute a cause-effect model which relates the various business causes of tight deadlines and the behavior of prioritizing features over quality aspects.