Architecture debt in information systems poses significant challenges, leading to increased maintenance costs, reduced performance, and compromised quality. Effective management of architecture debt is crucial for the sustainability and efficiency of software systems. This paper proposes a comprehensive metamodel to support managing architecture debt, emphasizing traceability and impact analysis. The metamodel provides a structured framework for identifying, evaluating, and mitigating architecture debt. It includes mechanisms for debt identification, classification, quantification, and prioritization. Additionally, it enhances traceability by linking architecture debt to corresponding architectural elements and design decisions, clarifying their origins and implications. A simple illustrative case study demonstrates the metamodel’s practical benefits. The results show that the metamodel effectively captures essential data from real-world debt management scenarios. Additionally, the metamodel introduces impact analysis capabilities, as the resulting models can be queried. This research contributes a novel, formal model-based tool for architects and developers to systematically address architecture debt, ensuring robust and flexible information systems. Future work should concentrate on expanding the empirical validation of the metamodel, refining its components based on real-world feedback, and exploring integration strategies with existing processes and tools.

Architecture Debt, Metamodel, Impact Analysis, Traceability, Model-Driven Engineering.