Abstract
Bug tracking systems play a central role in software development
since they allow users and developers to submit and discuss bugs
and new features. To better understand information and communication
needs in bug tracking, we analysed what questions are asked
in bug reports. We sampled 600 bug reports from the MOZILLA and
ECLIPSE projects and located 947 questions in the reports. Next, we
used an open card sort and identified eight categories of questions,
which can further be broken down into forty groups. We show the
value of this catalogue of frequently asked questions with a large
quantitative and qualitative study on when questions are asked and
how they are answered. A consequence of our results is that constant
user involvement is crucial for successful bug reports and that
better tools are needed to support this.
Refereed
No
