A Software Requirements Ecosystem: Linking Forum, Issue Tracker, and FAQs for Requirements Management
User feedback is an important resource in modern software development, often containing requirements that help address user concerns and desires for a software product. The feedback in online channels is a recent focus for software engineering researchers, with multiple studies proposing automatic analysis tools.
In this work, we investigate the product forums of two large open source software projects. Through a quantitative analysis, we show that forum feedback is often manually linked to related issue tracker entries and product documentation. By linking feedback to their existing documentation, development teams enhance their understanding of known issues, and direct their users to known solutions. We discuss how the links between forum, issue tracker, and product documentation form a requirements ecosystem that has not been identified in the previous literature.
We apply state-of-the-art deep-learning to automatically match forum posts with related issue tracker entries. Our approach identifies requirement matches with a mean average precision of 58.9% and hit ratio of 82.2%. Additionally, we apply deep-learning using an innovative clustering technique, achieving promising performance when matching forum posts to related product documentation. We discuss the possible applications of these automated techniques to support the flow of requirements between forum, issue tracker, and product documentation.
Thu 18 MayDisplayed time zone: Hobart change
13:45 - 15:15 | Requirements engineeringDEMO - Demonstrations / Technical Track / NIER - New Ideas and Emerging Results / Showcase / Journal-First Papers / SEIP - Software Engineering in Practice at Meeting Room 105 Chair(s): Luciano Baresi Politecnico di Milano | ||
13:45 15mTalk | Demystifying Privacy Policy of Third-Party Libraries in Mobile Apps Technical Track Kaifa ZHAO The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Xian Zhan The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Le Yu The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Shiyao Zhou The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hao Zhou Department of Computing, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China, Xiapu Luo The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Haoyu Wang Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Yepang Liu Southern University of Science and Technology Pre-print | ||
14:00 15mTalk | Cross-Domain Requirements Linking via Adversarial-based Domain Adaptation Technical Track Zhiyuan Chang Institute of Software at Chinese Academy of Sciences; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Mingyang Li Institute of Software at Chinese Academy of Sciences; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Qing Wang Institute of Software at Chinese Academy of Sciences; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shoubin Li Institute of Software at Chinese Academy of Sciences; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Junjie Wang Institute of Software at Chinese Academy of Sciences; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences | ||
14:15 15mTalk | DocToModel: Automated Authoring of Models from Diverse Requirements Specification Documents SEIP - Software Engineering in Practice Asha Rajbhoj TCS Research, Padmalata Nistala TCS Research, Vinay Kulkarni Tata Consultancy Services Research, Shivani Soni TCS Research, Ajim Pathan TCS Research | ||
14:30 15mTalk | Environment-Driven Abstraction Identification for Requirements-Based Testing Showcase Zedong Peng , Prachi Rathod , Nan Niu University of Cincinnati, Tanmay Bhowmik Mississippi State University, Hui Liu Beijing Institute of Technology, Lin Shi ISCAS, Zhi Jin Peking University | ||
14:45 7mTalk | A Web-Based Tool for Using Storyboard of Android Apps DEMO - Demonstrations | ||
14:52 7mTalk | InputGen: A Tool for Automatic Generation of Prototype Inputs to Support Rapid Requirements Validation DEMO - Demonstrations Shuanglong Chang Northeast Petroleum University, Juntao Gao Northeast Petroleum University, Yilong Yang Beihang University | ||
15:00 7mTalk | A Software Requirements Ecosystem: Linking Forum, Issue Tracker, and FAQs for Requirements Management Journal-First Papers James Tizard University of Auckland, Peter Devine The University of Auckland, Hechen Wang University of Auckland, Kelly Blincoe University of Auckland | ||
15:07 7mTalk | Towards Human-Centred Crowd Computing: Software for Better Use of Computational Resources NIER - New Ideas and Emerging Results Niroshinie Fernando Deakin University, Chetan Arora Monash University, Seng W.Loke Deakin University, Lubna Alam Deakin University, Stephen La Macchia Deakin University, Helen Graesser Deakin University Pre-print |