VisMinerTD: An open source tool to support the monitoring of the technical debt evolution using software visualization

Software development and maintenance activities can be negatively impacted by the presence of technical debt. One of its consequences is the software quality decrease. In order to produce better software, the evolution of technical debt needs to be monitored. However, this is not a trivial task since it usually requires the analysis of large amount of data and different types of debt. The areas of metrics and software visualization can be used to facilitate the monitoring of technical debt. This paper presents an open source tool called VisMinerTD that uses software metrics and visualization to support developers in software comprehension activities including the identification and monitoring of technical debt. VisMinerTD brings a new perspective to the hard work of identifying and monitoring technical debt evolution on software projects. Moreover, the user can easily plug new metrics and new visual metaphors to address specific technical debt identification and monitoring activities.