Browsing by Subject "Process smell"

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    ItemOpen Access
    Bug tracking process smells in practice
    (IEEE Computer Society, 2022-05-27) Jabrayilzade, Elgun; Evtikhiev, Mikhail; Tüzün, Eray; Kovalenko, Vladimir
    Software teams use bug tracking (BT) tools to report and manage bugs. Each record in a bug tracking system (BTS) is a reporting entity consisting of several information fields. The contents of the reports are similar across different tracking tools, though not the same. The variation in the workflow between teams prevents defining an ideal process of running BTS. Nevertheless, there are best practices reported both in white and gray literature. Developer teams may not adopt the best practices in their BT process. This study investigates the non-compliance of developers with best practices, so-called smells, in the BT process. We mine bug reports of four projects in the BTS of JetBrains, a software company, to observe the prevalence of BT smells in an industrial setting. Also, we survey developers to see (1) if they recognize the smells, (2) their perception of the severity of the smells, and (3) the potential benefits of a BT process smell detection tool. We found that (1) smells occur, and their detection requires a solid understanding of the BT practices of the projects, (2) smell severity perception varies across smell types, and (3) developers considered that a smell detection tool would be useful for six out of the 12 smell categories.
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    ItemOpen Access
    Bug tracking process smells in practice
    (IEEE Computer Society, 2022-05-27) Tuna, Erdem; Kovalenko, Vladimir; Tüzün, Eray
    Software teams use bug tracking (BT) tools to report and manage bugs. Each record in a bug tracking system (BTS) is a reporting entity consisting of several information fields. The contents of the reports are similar across different tracking tools, though not the same. The variation in the workflow between teams prevents defining an ideal process of running BTS. Nevertheless, there are best practices reported both in white and gray literature. Developer teams may not adopt the best practices in their BT process. This study investigates the non-compliance of developers with best practices, so-called smells, in the BT process. We mine bug reports of four projects in the BTS of JetBrains, a software company, to observe the prevalence of BT smells in an industrial setting. Also, we survey developers to see (1) if they recognize the smells, (2) their perception of the severity of the smells, and (3) the potential benefits of a BT process smell detection tool. We found that (1) smells occur, and their detection requires a solid understanding of the BT practices of the projects, (2) smell severity perception varies across smell types, and (3) developers considered that a smell detection tool would be useful for six out of the 12 smell categories. © 2022 IEEE.
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    ItemOpen Access
    Taxonomy of bug tracking process smells: perceptions of practitioners and an empirical analysis
    (2022-01) Qamar, Khushbakht Ali
    Bug tracking is the process of monitoring and reporting malfunctions or issues found in software. While there is no consensus on a formally specified bug tracking process, some certain rules and best practices for an optimal bug tracking pro-cess are accepted by many companies and open-source software (OSS) projects. Despite slight variations between different platforms, the primary aim of all these rules and practices is to perform a more efficient bug tracking process. Practi-tioners’ non-compliance with the best practices not only impedes the benefits of the bug tracking process but also negatively affects the other phases of the life cycle of software development. The goal of this study is to gain a better knowledge of the bad practices that occur during the bug tracking process, that is bug tracking process smells. In this study, based on the results of a multivocal literature review, we analyzed 60 sources in academic and gray literature and propose a taxonomy of 12 bad practices in the bug tracking process, that is bug tracking process smells. To quantitatively analyze these process smells, we inspected bug reports collected from six projects (four of them are Jira-based and the other two are Bugzilla-based). To get an idea about the perception of practitioners about the taxonomy of bug tracking process smells, we conducted a targeted survey with 30 software practitioners from different countries. Moreover, we statistically analyzed the impact of bug tracking process smells on the resolution time and reopening count of bugs. We observed from our empirical results that a considerable amount of bug tracking process smells exist in all projects and some of the process smell cate-gories have a statistically significant impact on quality and speed. Survey results showed that the majority of software practitioners agree with our taxonomy of bug tracking process smells. The empirical analysis reveals that bug tracking process smells have a significant impact on OSS projects. In practice, the pro-posed taxonomy may serve as a foundation for best practices and tool assistance for detecting and avoiding bug tracking process smells.
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    ItemOpen Access
    Taxonomy of bug tracking process smells: perceptions of practitioners and an empirical analysis
    (Elsevier, 2022-06-03) Khushbakht, Ali Qamar; Sülün, Emre; Tüzün, Eray
    Context: While there is no consensus on a formally specified bug tracking process, some certain rules and best practices for an optimal bug tracking process are accepted by many companies and open-source software (OSS) projects. Despite slight variations between different platforms, the primary aim of all these rules and practices is to perform a more efficient bug tracking process. Practitioners’ non-compliance with the best practices not only impedes the benefits of the bug tracking process but also negatively affects the other phases of software development life cycle. Objective: The goal of this study is to gain a better knowledge of the bad practices that occur during the bug tracking process (bug tracking process smells) and to perform quantitative analysis to show that these process smells exist in bug tracking systems. Moreover, we want to know the perception of software practitioners related to these process smells and also observe the impact of process smells on the bug tracking process. Methods: Based on the results of a multivocal literature review, we analyzed 60 sources in academic and gray literature and propose a taxonomy of 12 bad practices in the bug tracking process. To quantitatively analyze these process smells, we inspected bug reports collected from eight projects which use Jira, Bugzilla, and GitHub Issues. To get an idea about the perception of practitioners about the taxonomy of bug tracking process smells, we conducted a targeted survey with 30 software practitioners. Moreover, we statistically analyzed the impact of bug tracking process smells on the resolution time and reopening count of bugs. Results: We observed from our empirical results that a considerable amount of bug tracking process smells exist in all projects and some of the process smell categories have statistically significant impacts on quality and speed. Survey results shows that the majority of software practitioners agree with the proposed taxonomy of BT process smells. Conclusion: The statistical analysis reveals that bug tracking process smells have an impact on OSS projects. The proposed taxonomy may serve as a foundation for best practices and tool support for detecting and avoiding bug tracking process smells. © 2022 Elsevier B.V.
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    ItemOpen Access
    Towards a taxonomy of bug tracking process smells: a quantitative analysis
    (IEEE, 2021-01-27) Ali Qamar, Khushbakht; Sülün, Emre; Tüzün, Eray
    Bug tracking is the process of monitoring and reporting malfunctions or issues found in software. While there is no consensus on a formally specified bug tracking process, some certain rules and best practices for an optimal bug tracking process are accepted by many companies and open-source software (OSS) projects. Despite slight variations between different platforms, the primary aim of all these rules and practices is to perform a more efficient bug tracking process. Practitioners’ noncompliance with the best practices not only impedes the benefits of the bug tracking process but also negatively affects the other phases of the life cycle of software development.In this study, based on the results of a multivocal literature review, we analyzed 60 sources in academic and gray literature and propose a taxonomy of 12 bad practices in the bug tracking process, that is bug tracking process smells. To quantitatively analyze these process smells, we inspect bug reports collected from six projects. Among these projects, four of them are Jira-based (MongoDB Core Server, Evergreen, Confluence Server & Data Center, Jira Server & Data Center) and the other two are Bugzilla-based (GCC and Wireshark). We observed that a considerable amount of bug tracking process smells exist in all projects with varying ratios.