The Broken Windows theory of technical debt is broken

Last updated on July 8th, 2021 at 05:27 pm

Broken windows in an old abandoned factory
Broken windows in an old abandoned factory. To work in an environment dominated by properties like this must certainly be demoralizing. But whether existing technical debt actually causes people to make choices that incur new technical debt is another question. At this point, it’s an open question.

In the United States, the Broken Windows theory of crime control first appeared in the public conversation in 1982. Kelling and Wilson described it in The Atlantic (then known as The Atlantic Monthly) [Kelling 1982]. Briefly, the theory suggests that in urban environments, we can prevent serious crime by taking some simple steps. They include applying police resources to preventing small crimes such as vandalism, public drinking, and toll jumping. These measures create an atmosphere of order and lawfulness. Gladwell popularized the idea in his explosive best seller The Tipping Point [Gladwell 2000].

In the year before Gladwell’s work appeared, Hunt and Thomas incorporated the Broken Windows theory into their work, The Pragmatic Programmer. They suggest it as a justification for the importance of retiring technical debt immediately upon discovering it [Hunt 1999]. Briefly, the theory as applied to technical debt in software is that tolerating low quality and technical debt in a given asset encourages further degradation of quality and additional technical debt. Within the software community, the Broken Windows theory of managing technical debt is widely accepted [Note a].

Skepticism about the Broken Windows Theory

However, between Kelling’s work in 1982 and the work of Hunt and Thomas in 1999, something happened in criminology. Criminologists and sociologists had become skeptical of the Broken Windows theory as applied to crime prevention. As far back as 1998, investigations had begun to cast doubt on the Broken Windows theory [Harcourt 1998]. In 2006, Eck and Maguire assembled a review of the escalating controversy [Eck 2006].

Meanwhile, O’Brien, Sampson, and Winship, analyzing “big data,” failed to produce strong evidence of the theory’s validity. They did find a weak positive correlation between social orderliness and lawful behavior [O’Brien 2015]. But their research also showed a strong positive correlation between private violent behavior and major crimes. Others noted that what appeared to be positive results for the application of Broken Windows to crime prevention in the 1990s was actually explainable by other phenomena [Note b].

Social scientists and criminologists have taken these findings seriously enough to have founded the Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy at George Mason University. The Center maintains an evidence-based policing matrix to assist law enforcement organizations in evaluating the validity of claims about the efficacy of specific tactics and strategies. (See their review of Broken Windows Policing.)

The software engineering community is less skeptical

But even as doubts developed about the efficacy of Broken Windows policing for crime prevention, Broken Windows continued to find adherents in the software community. Software researchers continued to regard the theory as pertinent to managing technical debt in software. The software engineering community thus finds itself, perhaps, in the same position with respect to Broken Windows as it is with respect to the Tragedy of the Commons. Broken Windows and the Tragedy of the Commons are both fine analogies. But the fields that originated them now have better ways of understanding the phenomena in question.

Last words

Maybe it’s time for the engineering community to re-examine Broken Windows as it pertains to technological asset quality and technical debt. At this time, the author is aware only of anecdotal support for the Broken Windows theory of technical debt management. Perhaps the Broken Windows theory will work better in engineering than it did in social science or criminology, but do you want to bet your company on that?

References

[Eck 2006] J. Eck and E.R. Maguire. “Have Changes in Policing Reduced Violent Crime? An Assessment of the Evidence,” in Blumstein, Alfred, and Joel Wallman, eds. The Crime Drop in America, Revised Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, 207-265.

Order from Amazon

Cited in:

[Gladwell 2000] Malcolm Gladwell. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2000.

Order from Amazon

Cited in:

[Harcourt 1998] Bernard E. Harcourt. “Reflecting on the Subject: A Critique of the Social Influence Conception of Deterrence, the Broken Windows Theory, and Order-Maintenance Policing New York Style,” 97 Michigan Law Review 291, 1998.

Available: here; Retrieved: June 26, 2017

Cited in:

[Hunt 1999] Andrew Hunt and David Thomas. The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master. Reading, Massachusetts: Addison Wesley Longman, 1999.

Order from Amazon

Cited in:

[Kelling 1982] Kelling, George L. and James Q. Wilson. “Broken Windows: The police and neighborhood safety,” The Atlantic, 249(3):29–38, March 1982.

Available: here; Retrieved: June 25, 2017

Cited in:

[Note a] Articles and blog entries about applying Broken Windows to managing technical debt in software:

[Tuin 2012] Richard Tuin. “Software Development and the Broken Windows Theory,” blog entry at rtuin.nl, August 22, 2012.

Available: here; Retrieved: June 25, 2017.

Cited in:

[Matfield 2014] Kat Matfield. “The Broken Windows Theory of Technical Debt,” Mind the Product blog at MindTheProduct.com, November 11, 2014.

Available: here; Retrieved: June 25, 2017

Cited in:

[El-Geish 2015] Mohamed El-Geish. “Broken Windows: Software Entropy and Technical Debt,” blog at LinkedIn.com, March 6, 2015

Available: here; Retrieved: June 25, 2017

Cited in:

[Pietola 2012] Mikko Pietola. “Technical Excellence In Agile Software Projects,” Master’s Thesis, Information Technology, Oulu University of Applied Sciences, 2012.

Available: here; Retrieved: June 25, 2017

Cited in:

[Venners 2003] Bill Venners. “Don’t Live with Broken Windows: A Conversation with Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas, Part I,” blog at Artima.com, March 3, 2003.

Available: here; Retrieved: June 25, 2017.

Cited in:

Cited in:

[Note b] Articles and blog entries questioning the validity of the Broken Windows theory of crime prevention:

[Nuwer 2013] Rachel Nuwer. “Sorry, Malcolm Gladwell: NYC’s Drop in Crime Not Due to Broken Window Theory,” SmartNews blog at smithsonian.com, February 6, 2013.

Available: here; Retrieved: June 25, 2017.

Cited in:

[O’Brien 2015] [

Cited in:

[Childress 2016] Sarah Childress. “The Problem with ‘Broken Windows’ Policing,” PBS FrontLine, June 28, 2016.

Available: here; Retrieved: June 25, 2017

Cited in:

[Harcourt 2006a] Bernard E. Harcourt. “Bratton's ‘broken windows’:No matter what you’ve heard, the chief’s policing method wastes precious funds,” Los Angeles Times, April 20, 2006.

Available: here; Retrieved: June 25, 2017

Cited in:

[Harcourt 2006b] Bernard E. Harcourt and Jens Ludwig. “Broken Windows: New Evidence From New York City and a Five-City Social Experiment,” University of Chicago Law Review, Vol. 73, 2006.

Available: here; Retrieved: June 25, 2017

Cited in:

Cited in:

[O’Brien 2015] [

Cited in:

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The Tragedy of the Commons is a distraction

Last updated on July 8th, 2021 at 04:27 pm

A map of the Boston Common and Public Garden, circa 1890. This is the kind of “common” referred to in the tragedy of the commons.
A map of the Boston Common and Public Garden, circa 1890. By 1890 it was basically a park. But as late as 1830 it was still in use as a cow pasture. Home refrigeration was rare then, except by ice blocks. The best way to get fresh dairy products was to have a cow. In the very early days, 1633-1640, anyone could graze on the Common. But as wealthy people acquired more animals, the common became overgrazed. A 70-cow limit was imposed. That limit stood until 1830. It’s an example of a method for managing a shared resource. This map is from an atlas of Boston published by G.W. Bromley & Co., courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Many believe that technical debt arises, in part, because of a phenomenon known as the Tragedy of the Commons [Hardin 1968]. The Tragedy of the Commons is an allegory that purports to demonstrate how shared resources degrade. It holds that the user communities associated with shared resources inevitably degrade those resources until they’re depleted. The allegory supposedly supports the thesis that only monocratic control of an asset can provide the strict regulation that prevents its inevitable degradation. Advocates of this approach to limiting the degradation arising from the expansion of technical debt hold that assigning sole ownership of resources, resource by resource, is the only effective method of controlling technical debt.

How adherents of the theory manage shared assets

The resources in question here are the assets that tend to accumulate technical debt. Adherents of the theory would impose order by dividing each technological asset into one or more sectors, sometimes called development silos. Each development silo would have one organizational unit designated as the “owner.” Owners have the power to develop, maintain, or extend that sector [Bossavit 2013] [Morris 2012]. They would presumably resolve irreconcilable disagreements about the direction or purpose of a particular sector by branching.

Ironically, such an approach would—and demonstrably does—produce significant technical debt in the form of duplication of artifacts and services. Moreover, it elevates costs relative to a truly shared asset. Costs increase because of reduced sharing and increased need for testing. We can regard such an approach as dysfunctional conflict avoidance [Brenner 2016b].

How adherents apply the theory to explain technical debt

At one time researchers in political economics regarded the Tragedy of the Commons as universally valid. But subsequent research has demonstrated that the principle it describes isn’t generally applicable. Hardin first described the Tragedy of the Commons in 1968, in the form of an allegory [Hardin 1968]. In his words:

Picture a pasture open to all. It is to be expected that each herdsman will try to keep as many cattle as possible on the commons. Such an arrangement may work reasonably satisfactorily for centuries because tribal wars, poaching, and disease keep the numbers of both man and beast well below the carrying capacity of the land. Finally, however, comes the day of reckoning, that is, the day when the long-desired goal of social stability becomes a reality. At this point, the inherent logic of the commons remorselessly generates tragedy.

As a rational being, each herdsman seeks to maximize his gain. Explicitly or implicitly, more or less consciously, he asks, “What is the utility to me of adding one more animal to my herd?”

Hardin then explains that the logic of the situation compels each herdsman to exploit the shared resource to the maximum. Each herdsman puts his or her own interests ahead of the welfare of the resource.

But the theory doesn’t work

And so it goes, supposedly, with technical debt. Each user of the shared asset expends resources on development, maintenance, and enhancement only to the extent that the immediate need justifies the expenditure. Retiring any legacy technical debt, or any technical debt accumulated in the course of meeting those immediate needs, is regarded as low priority. Because resources for debt retirement are rarely if ever sufficient to meet the need, technical debt grows inexorably. Eventually, the organization abandons the shared asset because it becomes unmaintainable.

However, careful research shows that Hardin’s Commons allegory isn’t applicable to every situation involving shared resources. That same research casts doubt on the validity of the assertion that development silos are necessary in any approach to technical debt management.

Enter Elinor Ostrom

Certainly there are many examples of shared resources degrading along the lines Hardin suggests. An example is the collapse of the Northwest Atlantic cod fishery [Frank 2005]. But many counterexamples exist. Research by the late political economist Elinor Ostrom uncovered numerous examples of complex social schemes for maintaining common resources sustainably [Ostrom 2009] [Ostrom 1990]. Ostrom reported on systems that successfully managed shared resources over long terms—in some cases, centuries. For this work, she received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2009.

As Ostrom’s research demonstrated, the problem with Hardin’s allegory is that it applies only to resources open to unregulated use. A World Bank Discussion Paper by Bromley and Cernea [Bromley 1989] clearly describes the misapplication of the Tragedy of the Commons:

For some time now, Hardin’s allegory of the “tragedy” has had remarkable currency among researchers and development practitioners. Not only has it become the dominant paradigm within which social scientists assess natural resource issues, but it appears explicitly and implicitly in the formulation of many programs and projects and in other beliefs and prejudices derived from it. Unfortunately, its capacity for aiding our understanding of resource management regimes falls far short of its power as a metaphor. By confusing an open access regime (a free-for-all) with a common property regime (in which group size and behavioral rules are specified) the metaphor denies the very possibility for resource users to act together and institute checks and balances, rules and sanctions, for their own interaction within a given environment.

Hardin himself later published an extension of the allegory that clarified the role of regulation [Hardin 1998]. Lloyd had observed this much earlier [Lloyd 1833].

The real tragedy of the Tragedy of the Commons

The real tragedy for technology managers would be their failure to learn from the past errors of social scientists and political economists. If they then repeat this now well-understood confusion about the domain of applicability of Hardin’s allegory, they would be compounding the tragedy.

We can apply Ostrom’s result to the problem of managing technical debt if we identify the technical asset as the shared resource. Next we would identify as the community exploiting the resource the stakeholders who employ, develop, maintain, cyber-defend, or extend that technical asset. Ostrom’s results tell us that sustainable exploitation is possible. If the community devises rules, customs, and sanctions that manage the technical debt, the resource is sustainable. Kim and Wood [Kim 2011] provide an analysis that explains how regulation can avert depletion scenarios. Technology managers can apply these lessons to the problem of managing technical debt.

Last words

The Tragedy of the Commons is a distraction. Technical debt isn’t an inevitable result of sharing assets when the organization adheres to a Principle of Sustainability. That principle is that sustainability is possible if the community sharing the asset devises customs, rules, and sanctions that control technical debt. You just can’t have a free-for-all unregulated regime, as most organizations now do. Management and practitioners must collaborate to manage the asset. And regular updating of the customs, rules, and sanctions is probably necessary. Leadership in devising those customs, rules, and sanctions is a job for the policymaker.

References

[Bossavit 2013] Laurent Bossavit (@Morendil), “Zero Code Ownership will lead to a tragedy-of-the-commons situation, where everybody bemoans how ‘technical debt’ makes their job suck.”, a tweet published April 20, 2013.

Available: here; Retrieved December 29, 2016.

Cited in:

[Brenner 2016b] Richard Brenner. “Some Causes of Scope Creep,” Point Lookout 2:36, September 4, 2002.

Available here; Retrieved December 30, 2016.

Cited in:

[Bromley 1989] Daniel W. Bromley and Michael M. Cernea. “The Management of Common Property Natural Resources: Some Conceptual and Operational Fallacies.” World Bank Discussion Paper WDP-57. 1989.

Available here; Retrieved December 29, 2016.

Cited in:

[Eck 2006] J. Eck and E.R. Maguire. “Have Changes in Policing Reduced Violent Crime? An Assessment of the Evidence,” in Blumstein, Alfred, and Joel Wallman, eds. The Crime Drop in America, Revised Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, 207-265.

Order from Amazon

Cited in:

[Frank 2005] Frank, Kenneth T., Brian Petrie, Jae S. Choi, William C. Leggett. "Trophic Cascades in a Formerly Cod-Dominated Ecosystem." Science. 308 (5728): 1621–1623. June 10, 2005.

Available here; Retrieved: March 10, 2017.

Cited in:

[Gladwell 2000] Malcolm Gladwell. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2000.

Order from Amazon

Cited in:

[Harcourt 1998] Bernard E. Harcourt. “Reflecting on the Subject: A Critique of the Social Influence Conception of Deterrence, the Broken Windows Theory, and Order-Maintenance Policing New York Style,” 97 Michigan Law Review 291, 1998.

Available: here; Retrieved: June 26, 2017

Cited in:

[Hardin 1968] Garrett Hardin. “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Science, 162, 1243-1248 1968.

Available: here; Retrieved December 29, 2016.

Cited in:

[Hardin 1998] Garrett Hardin. “Extensions of ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’,” Science, May 1, 1998: Vol. 280, Issue 5364, 682-683.

Available: here; Retrieved: July 30, 2017

Cited in:

[Hunt 1999] Andrew Hunt and David Thomas. The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master. Reading, Massachusetts: Addison Wesley Longman, 1999.

Order from Amazon

Cited in:

[Kelling 1982] Kelling, George L. and James Q. Wilson. “Broken Windows: The police and neighborhood safety,” The Atlantic, 249(3):29–38, March 1982.

Available: here; Retrieved: June 25, 2017

Cited in:

[Kim 2011] Daniel H. Kim and Virginia Anderson. Systems Archetype Basics: From Story to Structure, Waltham, Massachusetts: Pegasus Communications, Inc., 2011

Available: here; Retrieved: July 4, 2017 Order from Amazon

Cited in:

[Lloyd 1833] Lloyd, W. F. Two Lectures on the Checks to Population, 1833.

Available: here; Retrieved: July 30, 2017

Cited in:

[Morris 2012] Ben Morris. “How to manage down the payments on your technical debt,” Ben Morris Software Architecture blog, September 3, 2012.

Available here; Retrieved December 30, 2016. This blog entry contains an assertion that controlling formation of new technical debt requires only “diligence, ownership and governance.”

Cited in:

[Note a] Articles and blog entries about applying Broken Windows to managing technical debt in software:

[Tuin 2012] Richard Tuin. “Software Development and the Broken Windows Theory,” blog entry at rtuin.nl, August 22, 2012.

Available: here; Retrieved: June 25, 2017.

Cited in:

[Matfield 2014] Kat Matfield. “The Broken Windows Theory of Technical Debt,” Mind the Product blog at MindTheProduct.com, November 11, 2014.

Available: here; Retrieved: June 25, 2017

Cited in:

[El-Geish 2015] Mohamed El-Geish. “Broken Windows: Software Entropy and Technical Debt,” blog at LinkedIn.com, March 6, 2015

Available: here; Retrieved: June 25, 2017

Cited in:

[Pietola 2012] Mikko Pietola. “Technical Excellence In Agile Software Projects,” Master’s Thesis, Information Technology, Oulu University of Applied Sciences, 2012.

Available: here; Retrieved: June 25, 2017

Cited in:

[Venners 2003] Bill Venners. “Don’t Live with Broken Windows: A Conversation with Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas, Part I,” blog at Artima.com, March 3, 2003.

Available: here; Retrieved: June 25, 2017.

Cited in:

Cited in:

[Note b] Articles and blog entries questioning the validity of the Broken Windows theory of crime prevention:

[Nuwer 2013] Rachel Nuwer. “Sorry, Malcolm Gladwell: NYC’s Drop in Crime Not Due to Broken Window Theory,” SmartNews blog at smithsonian.com, February 6, 2013.

Available: here; Retrieved: June 25, 2017.

Cited in:

[O’Brien 2015] [

Cited in:

[Childress 2016] Sarah Childress. “The Problem with ‘Broken Windows’ Policing,” PBS FrontLine, June 28, 2016.

Available: here; Retrieved: June 25, 2017

Cited in:

[Harcourt 2006a] Bernard E. Harcourt. “Bratton's ‘broken windows’:No matter what you’ve heard, the chief’s policing method wastes precious funds,” Los Angeles Times, April 20, 2006.

Available: here; Retrieved: June 25, 2017

Cited in:

[Harcourt 2006b] Bernard E. Harcourt and Jens Ludwig. “Broken Windows: New Evidence From New York City and a Five-City Social Experiment,” University of Chicago Law Review, Vol. 73, 2006.

Available: here; Retrieved: June 25, 2017

Cited in:

Cited in:

[O’Brien 2015] [

Cited in:

[Ostrom 1990] Elinor Ostrom. Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Cited in:

[Ostrom 2009] Elinor Ostrom. “Beyond the tragedy of commons,” Stockholm whiteboard seminars.

Video, 8:26 min. Apr 3, 2009. here; Retrieved December 29, 2016.

Cited in:

Other posts in this thread

Organizational psychopathy: career advancement by surfing the debt tsunami

Last updated on July 17th, 2021 at 06:54 am

The aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, 26 December 2004
The aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, 26 December 2004. Shown is what remained of Meulaboh, Sumatra, Indonesia, after the tsunami struck. The photo was taken on January 10. At the lower left is a Landing Craft Air Cushion (LCAC) hovercraft vehicle, assigned to USS Bonhomme Richard (LHD-6), delivering supplies. LCACs are capable of transporting more supplies than helicopters in a single trip. The technical debt devastation left behind after an organizational psychopath moves on to further conquests can be just as overwhelming as the physical devastation left behind after a tsunami. Photo by U.S. Navy courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

During policy debates, some advocates take positions that offer short-term advantages in exchange for long-term disadvantages. The long-term disadvantages are often in the form of new technical debt. Or they might advocate allowing legacy technical debt to remain in place. Some of these decisions can be strategic, and they can benefit the enterprise. But when the primary beneficiary of the strategy is the decision maker or the advocate, a dominant contributing factor can be organizational psychopathy. This risk is higher when he or she intends knowingly to move on to a new position or to employment elsewhere before the true cost of the technical debt becomes evident.

Such decisions can be counterproductive for the enterprise in the long term. But decision makers or advocates nevertheless favor these decisions, because they plan to take credit for the short-term benefits. They then move on to new career positions elsewhere to escape the technical debt problems they created. In effect, the decision maker or advocate plans to “surf the debt tsunami.”

The organizational psychopath

People who adopt strategies of this kind might be following the pattern of organizational psychopathy [Babiak 2007] [Morse 2004]. Organizational psychopaths compulsively seek power and control over others. They use a vast array of tactics, but the tactic of greatest relevance to this discussion is the use of enterprise resources to advance the psychopath’s career. Technical debt provides a mechanism for borrowing future resources to enhance present performance, thus advancing the career of the psychopath. It’s especially attractive to the psychopath because the harmful consequences of technical debt can remain hidden until the psychopath has long ago moved on.

Psychopaths are better equipped than most to execute such strategies. They can be exceedingly charming, intelligent, charismatic, and adept at deception. They’re willing to conceal the truth about the technical debt they create, misrepresenting its costs and consequences, or concealing it altogether. Most important, organizational psychopaths seem to lack the internal regulators of conscience and compunction that limit the actions of non-psychopaths. For example, in a debate about a specific technical decision, the psychopath is willing to use any tools available to win the point, including using deception to destroy the career of anyone who challenges the psychopath’s position.

Last words

Babiak and Hare estimate that the incidence of psychopathy in senior positions in business is about 3-4%—between 1/30 and 1/25. However, I’m unaware of any studies of the strategic use of technical debt by these individuals. It’s reasonable to suppose that technical debt has been so employed, but the significance of this phenomenon is unknown. Serious investigation is in order.

References

[Babiak 2007] Paul Babiak and Robert D. Hare. Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work. New York: HarperCollins, 2007. ISBN:978-0-06-114789-0

An accessible and authoritative overview of organizational psychopathy. Order from Amazon

Cited in:

[Bossavit 2013] Laurent Bossavit (@Morendil), “Zero Code Ownership will lead to a tragedy-of-the-commons situation, where everybody bemoans how ‘technical debt’ makes their job suck.”, a tweet published April 20, 2013.

Available: here; Retrieved December 29, 2016.

Cited in:

[Brenner 2016b] Richard Brenner. “Some Causes of Scope Creep,” Point Lookout 2:36, September 4, 2002.

Available here; Retrieved December 30, 2016.

Cited in:

[Bromley 1989] Daniel W. Bromley and Michael M. Cernea. “The Management of Common Property Natural Resources: Some Conceptual and Operational Fallacies.” World Bank Discussion Paper WDP-57. 1989.

Available here; Retrieved December 29, 2016.

Cited in:

[Eck 2006] J. Eck and E.R. Maguire. “Have Changes in Policing Reduced Violent Crime? An Assessment of the Evidence,” in Blumstein, Alfred, and Joel Wallman, eds. The Crime Drop in America, Revised Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, 207-265.

Order from Amazon

Cited in:

[Frank 2005] Frank, Kenneth T., Brian Petrie, Jae S. Choi, William C. Leggett. "Trophic Cascades in a Formerly Cod-Dominated Ecosystem." Science. 308 (5728): 1621–1623. June 10, 2005.

Available here; Retrieved: March 10, 2017.

Cited in:

[Gladwell 2000] Malcolm Gladwell. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2000.

Order from Amazon

Cited in:

[Harcourt 1998] Bernard E. Harcourt. “Reflecting on the Subject: A Critique of the Social Influence Conception of Deterrence, the Broken Windows Theory, and Order-Maintenance Policing New York Style,” 97 Michigan Law Review 291, 1998.

Available: here; Retrieved: June 26, 2017

Cited in:

[Hardin 1968] Garrett Hardin. “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Science, 162, 1243-1248 1968.

Available: here; Retrieved December 29, 2016.

Cited in:

[Hardin 1998] Garrett Hardin. “Extensions of ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’,” Science, May 1, 1998: Vol. 280, Issue 5364, 682-683.

Available: here; Retrieved: July 30, 2017

Cited in:

[Hunt 1999] Andrew Hunt and David Thomas. The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master. Reading, Massachusetts: Addison Wesley Longman, 1999.

Order from Amazon

Cited in:

[Kelling 1982] Kelling, George L. and James Q. Wilson. “Broken Windows: The police and neighborhood safety,” The Atlantic, 249(3):29–38, March 1982.

Available: here; Retrieved: June 25, 2017

Cited in:

[Kim 2011] Daniel H. Kim and Virginia Anderson. Systems Archetype Basics: From Story to Structure, Waltham, Massachusetts: Pegasus Communications, Inc., 2011

Available: here; Retrieved: July 4, 2017 Order from Amazon

Cited in:

[Lloyd 1833] Lloyd, W. F. Two Lectures on the Checks to Population, 1833.

Available: here; Retrieved: July 30, 2017

Cited in:

[Morris 2012] Ben Morris. “How to manage down the payments on your technical debt,” Ben Morris Software Architecture blog, September 3, 2012.

Available here; Retrieved December 30, 2016. This blog entry contains an assertion that controlling formation of new technical debt requires only “diligence, ownership and governance.”

Cited in:

[Morse 2004] Gardiner Morse. “Executive psychopaths,” Harvard Business Review, 82:10, 20-22, 2004.

Available: here; Retrieved: April 25, 2018

Cited in:

[Note a] Articles and blog entries about applying Broken Windows to managing technical debt in software:

[Tuin 2012] Richard Tuin. “Software Development and the Broken Windows Theory,” blog entry at rtuin.nl, August 22, 2012.

Available: here; Retrieved: June 25, 2017.

Cited in:

[Matfield 2014] Kat Matfield. “The Broken Windows Theory of Technical Debt,” Mind the Product blog at MindTheProduct.com, November 11, 2014.

Available: here; Retrieved: June 25, 2017

Cited in:

[El-Geish 2015] Mohamed El-Geish. “Broken Windows: Software Entropy and Technical Debt,” blog at LinkedIn.com, March 6, 2015

Available: here; Retrieved: June 25, 2017

Cited in:

[Pietola 2012] Mikko Pietola. “Technical Excellence In Agile Software Projects,” Master’s Thesis, Information Technology, Oulu University of Applied Sciences, 2012.

Available: here; Retrieved: June 25, 2017

Cited in:

[Venners 2003] Bill Venners. “Don’t Live with Broken Windows: A Conversation with Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas, Part I,” blog at Artima.com, March 3, 2003.

Available: here; Retrieved: June 25, 2017.

Cited in:

Cited in:

[Note b] Articles and blog entries questioning the validity of the Broken Windows theory of crime prevention:

[Nuwer 2013] Rachel Nuwer. “Sorry, Malcolm Gladwell: NYC’s Drop in Crime Not Due to Broken Window Theory,” SmartNews blog at smithsonian.com, February 6, 2013.

Available: here; Retrieved: June 25, 2017.

Cited in:

[O’Brien 2015] [

Cited in:

[Childress 2016] Sarah Childress. “The Problem with ‘Broken Windows’ Policing,” PBS FrontLine, June 28, 2016.

Available: here; Retrieved: June 25, 2017

Cited in:

[Harcourt 2006a] Bernard E. Harcourt. “Bratton's ‘broken windows’:No matter what you’ve heard, the chief’s policing method wastes precious funds,” Los Angeles Times, April 20, 2006.

Available: here; Retrieved: June 25, 2017

Cited in:

[Harcourt 2006b] Bernard E. Harcourt and Jens Ludwig. “Broken Windows: New Evidence From New York City and a Five-City Social Experiment,” University of Chicago Law Review, Vol. 73, 2006.

Available: here; Retrieved: June 25, 2017

Cited in:

Cited in:

[O’Brien 2015] [

Cited in:

[Ostrom 1990] Elinor Ostrom. Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Cited in:

[Ostrom 2009] Elinor Ostrom. “Beyond the tragedy of commons,” Stockholm whiteboard seminars.

Video, 8:26 min. Apr 3, 2009. here; Retrieved December 29, 2016.

Cited in:

Other posts in this thread

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