The bug report duplication problem: an exploratory study

Duplicate bug report entries in bug trackers have a negative impact on software maintenance and evolution. This is due, among other factors, to the increased time spent on report analysis and validation, which in some cases takes over 20 min. Therefore, a considerable amount of time is lost in duplicate bug report analysis. In order to understand the possible factors that cause bug report duplication and its impact on software development, this paper presents an exploratory study in which bug tracking data from private and open source projects were analyzed. The results show, for example, that all projects we investigated had duplicate bug reports and a considerable amount of time was wasted by this duplication. Furthermore, features such as project lifetime, staff size, and the number of bug reports do not seem to be significant factors for duplication, while others, such as the submitters’ profile and the number of submitters, do seem to influence the bug report duplication.