https://www.mdu.se/

Technical credit has recently been proposed as a concept encompassing system elements and engineering practices that reduce development friction and enable sustainable software evolution. While promising, it remains an emerging idea with limited consensus on its definition and practical implications. This paper reports an empirical study investigating how practitioners perceive and operationalize technical credit, and what challenges they foresee in its adoption. We conducted an online survey with 31 experienced software professionals, complemented by six semi-structured interviews for deeper insights. Our findings show the concept strongly resonates with industry practitioners. We highlight concrete scenarios and artifacts where technical credit is seen as impactful, as well as opportunities for embedding it into tools, processes, and architectural decision-making. © 2026 Copyright held by the owner/author(s).