An Exploratory Study on Architectural Knowledge in Issue Tracking Systems

Software developers use issue trackers (e.g. Jira) to manage defects, bugs, tasks, change requests, etc. In this paper we explore (a) how architectural knowledge concepts component behavior, contextual constraints) are textually represented in issues as adjectives), (b) which commonly occur issues, and (c) appear together. We analyzed the Jira of three large Apache projects. To identify “architecturally relevant” linked architecturally relevant source code changes studied systems. then developed a book by manually labeling subset issues. After reaching conceptual saturation, coded remaining Our findings support empirically-grounded search tools for future reuse.