Technical Debt Accumulation Simulator¶

Run the Technical Debt Accumulation Simulator MicroSim Fullscreen
Edit in the p5.js Editor

About This MicroSim¶

This MicroSim models how technical debt accumulates over 24 months as a function of architectural quality, feature pressure, and refactoring investment, and how it erodes feature-delivery velocity. Toggling "Show ATAM Effect" demonstrates how an early architecture evaluation bends the debt trajectory, making the return on investment of ATAM tangible.

How to Use¶

Press Start to run the simulation. Adjust the three sliders to change architectural quality, business feature pressure, and monthly refactoring investment, and watch the three curves respond. Enable Show ATAM Effect to see how an evaluation at month 3 changes the outcome. Press Reset to start over.

Iframe Embed Code¶

You can add this MicroSim to any web page by adding this to your HTML:

<iframe src="https://dmccreary.github.io/atam/sims/technical-debt-simulator/main.html"
        width="100%"
        scrolling="no"></iframe>

Lesson Plan¶

Grade Level¶

Undergraduate / Professional

Duration¶

10-15 minutes

Prerequisites¶

Familiarity with the concepts of technical debt and delivery velocity.

Bloom's Taxonomy Level¶

Apply (L3)

Learning Objective¶

Students can manipulate architectural quality and feature pressure to observe how debt accumulates and predicts delivery slowdown, and use this model to justify the ROI of architecture evaluation.

Activities¶

Exploration (5 min): Students freely interact with the MicroSim to discover its behavior.
Guided Practice (5 min): Working from the learning objective above, students answer 2-3 focused questions posed by the instructor.
Discussion (5 min): Students share observations and connect them back to ATAM concepts.

Assessment¶

Ask students to find a slider combination that produces an unrecoverable "debt spiral," then explain why early evaluation would have helped.

References¶

Bass, L., Clements, P., & Kazman, R. (2021). Software Architecture in Practice (4th ed.). Addison-Wesley.
Kazman, R., Klein, M., & Clements, P. (2000). ATAM: Method for Architecture Evaluation (CMU/SEI-2000-TR-004).