Visual representation of bug report assignment recommendations

Abstract

Software development projects typically use an issue tracking system where the project members and users can either report faults or request additional features. Each of these reports needs to be triaged to determine such things as the priority of the report or which developers should be assigned to resolve the report. To assist a triager with report assigning, an assignment recommender has been suggested as a means of improving the process. However, proposed assignment recommenders typically present a list of developer names, without an explanation of the rationale. This work focuses on providing visual explanations for bug report assignment recommendations. We examine the use of a supervised and unsupervised machine learning algorithm for the assignment recommendation from which we can provide recommendation rationale. We explore the use of three types of graphs for the presentation of the rationale and validate their use-cases and usability through a small user study.