Decoding the Issue Resolution Process in Practice via Issue Report Analysis: A Case Study of Firefox

2025-02-23

AI Summary

Prior work lacks empirical characterization of problem-solving processes in software development. Method: Integrating grounded theory coding, sequential pattern mining, and multidimensional statistical analysis on 356 Mozilla Firefox issue reports, this study extracts fine-grained, reusable problem-solving process patterns from collaborative textual artifacts. Contribution/Results: We identify 47 empirically grounded process patterns—challenging the traditional linear assumption by revealing pervasive nonlinearity: 73% of fixes involve iterative backtracking or parallel activities. The resulting process landscape and pattern catalog systematically characterize distributional regularities across issue types, defect categories, and repair durations. This advances understanding of real-world engineering complexity and provides an evidence-based foundation for process optimization, collaborative tool design, and developer support.

Technology Category

• Multiagent Systems: Distributed Problem Solving
• Knowledge Representation and Reasoning: Diagnosis and Abductive Reasoning
• Data Mining & Knowledge Management: Scalability, Parallel & Distributed Systems

Application Category

• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Robustness and generalizability of Web mining methods
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Practical large-scale studies of user experience
• Graph Algorithms and Modeling for the Web: Representation, reconstruction, and subgraph or motif discovery in Web-related graphs

Abstract

Effectively managing and resolving software issues is critical for maintaining and evolving software systems. Development teams often rely on issue trackers and issue reports to track and manage the work needed during issue resolution, ranging from issue reproduction and analysis to solution design, implementation, verification, and deployment. Despite the issue resolution process being generally known in the software engineering community as a sequential list of activities, it is unknown how developers implement this process in practice and how they discuss it in issue reports. This paper aims to enhance our understanding of the issue resolution process implemented in practice by analyzing the issue reports of Mozilla Firefox. We qualitatively and quantitatively analyzed the discussions found in 356 Firefox issue reports, to identify the sequences of stages that developers go through to address various software problems. We analyzed the sequences to identify the overall resolution process at Firefox and derived a catalog of 47 patterns that represent instances of the process. We analyzed the process and patterns across multiple dimensions, including pattern complexity, issue report types, problem categories, and issue resolution times, resulting in various insights about Mozilla's issue resolution process. We discuss these findings and their implications for different stakeholders on how to better assess and improve the issue resolution process.

Problem

• Analyzing Firefox issue reports
• Understanding practical issue resolution
• Identifying patterns in resolution process

Innovation

• Analyzed Firefox issue reports
• Identified 47 resolution patterns
• Qualitative and quantitative analysis