Poster: Understanding the Role of Reporting in Work Item Tracking Systems for Software Development: An Industrial Case Study

Work item tracking systems such as Visual Studio Team Services, JIRA, and GitHub issue tracker are widely used by software engineers. They help in managing different kinds of deliverables (e.g. features, user stories, bugs), plan sprints, distribute tasks across the team and prioritize the work. While these tools provide reporting capabilities there has been little research into the role these reports play in the overall software development process. In this study, we conduct an empirical investigation on the usage of Analytics Service - a reporting service provided by Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) to build dashboards and reports out of their work item tracking data. In particular, we want to understand why and how users interact with Analytics Service and what are the outcomes and business decisions taken by stakeholders from reports built using Analytics Service. We perform semi-structured interviews and survey with users of Analytics Service to understand usage and challenges. Our report on qualitative and quantitative analysis can help organizations and engineers building similar tools or services.