A Literature Review of Research in Software Defect Reporting

In 2002, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) estimated that software defects cost the U.S. economy in the area of $60 billion a year. It is well known that identifying and tracking these defects efficiently has a measurable impact on software reliability. In this work, we evaluate 104 academic papers on defect reporting published since the NIST report to 2012 to identify the most important advancements in improving software reliability though the efficient identification and tracking of software defects. We categorize the research into the areas of automatic defect detection, automatic defect fixing, attributes of defect reports, quality of defect reports, and triage of defect reports. We then summarize the most important work being done in each area. Finally, we provide conclusions on the current state of the literature, suggest tools and lessons learned from the research for practice, and comment on open research problems.