When Bugs Linger: A Study of Anomalous Resolution Time Outliers and Their Themes

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Patil, Avinash
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866915714908028928
author Patil, Avinash
author_facet Patil, Avinash
contents Efficient bug resolution is critical for maintaining software quality and user satisfaction. However, specific bug reports experience unusually long resolution times, which may indicate underlying process inefficiencies or complex issues. This study presents a comprehensive analysis of bug resolution anomalies across seven prominent open-source repositories: Cassandra, Firefox, Hadoop, HBase, SeaMonkey, Spark, and Thunderbird. Utilizing statistical methods such as Z-score and Interquartile Range (IQR), we identify anomalies in bug resolution durations. To understand the thematic nature of these anomalies, we apply Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency (TF-IDF) for textual feature extraction and KMeans clustering to group similar bug summaries. Our findings reveal consistent patterns across projects, with anomalies often clustering around test failures, enhancement requests, and user interface issues. This approach provides actionable insights for project maintainers to prioritize and effectively address long-standing bugs.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_16140
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle When Bugs Linger: A Study of Anomalous Resolution Time Outliers and Their Themes
Patil, Avinash
Software Engineering
Machine Learning
Efficient bug resolution is critical for maintaining software quality and user satisfaction. However, specific bug reports experience unusually long resolution times, which may indicate underlying process inefficiencies or complex issues. This study presents a comprehensive analysis of bug resolution anomalies across seven prominent open-source repositories: Cassandra, Firefox, Hadoop, HBase, SeaMonkey, Spark, and Thunderbird. Utilizing statistical methods such as Z-score and Interquartile Range (IQR), we identify anomalies in bug resolution durations. To understand the thematic nature of these anomalies, we apply Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency (TF-IDF) for textual feature extraction and KMeans clustering to group similar bug summaries. Our findings reveal consistent patterns across projects, with anomalies often clustering around test failures, enhancement requests, and user interface issues. This approach provides actionable insights for project maintainers to prioritize and effectively address long-standing bugs.
title When Bugs Linger: A Study of Anomalous Resolution Time Outliers and Their Themes
topic Software Engineering
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.16140