how developer communication frequency relates to bug introducing changes
Communication between developers plays a very central role in team-based software development for a variety of tasks such as coordinating development and maintenance activities, discussing requirements for better comprehension, assessing alternative solutions to complex problems, and like. However, the frequency of communication varies from time to time - sometimes developers exchange more messages with each other than at other times. In this paper, we investigate whether developer communication has any bearing with software quality by examining the relationship between communication frequency and number of bugs injected into the software. The data used for this study is drawn from the bug database, version archive, and mailing lists of the JDT sub-project in ECLIPSE. Our results show a statistically significant positive correlation between communication frequency and number of injected bugs in the software. We also noted that communication levels of key developers in the project do no correlate with number of injected bugs. Moreover, we show that defect prediction models can accommodate social aspects of the development process and potentially deliver more reliable results.
developer communication software quality mailing lists social network analysis