# Wait For It: Identifying "On-Hold" Self-Admitted Technical Debt

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1901.09511 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.09511/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 28 Jan 2019.

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Self-Admitted Technical Debt Detection Approaches: A Decade Systematic Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.15020/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Self-admitted technical debt refers to situations where a software developer knows that their current implementation is not optimal and indicates this using a source code comment. In this work, we hypothesize that it is possible to develop automated techniques to understand a subset of these comments in more detail, and to propose tool support that can help developers manage self-admitted technical debt more effectively. Based on a qualitative study of 335 comments indicating self-admitted technical debt, we first identify one particular class of debt amenable to automated management: "on-hold" self-admitted technical debt, i.e., debt which contains a condition to indicate that a developer is waiting for a certain event or an updated functionality having been implemented elsewhere. We then design and evaluate an automated classifier which can identify these "on-hold" instances with an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) of 0.83 as well as detect the specific conditions that developers are waiting for. Our work presents a first step towards automated tool support that is able to indicate when certain instances of self-admitted technical debt are ready to be addressed.