Field weighting for automatic bug triaging systems

Every organization strives to provide online support for their customers in an attempt to rapidly provide solutions to customer bug reports. In the automation software industry, wherein software bugs can have significant repercussions for the client, rapid response to reported bugs is a very critical function. Current approaches to such response focuses on a 911 type of dispatch mechanism, wherein a dispatcher coordinates the assignment process with the help of Subject Matter Experts (SMEs). In this exploratory paper, we propose a mechanism to automate this process. As a case study, we present comparative work on bug data from Firefox and Eclipse bug reports. We have proposed and demonstrated a field-based weighting scheme. Comparing well with other such reported efforts, our approach has achieved 96.25% accuracy on Firefox (out of 1764 bug reports) and 97.83% accuracy on Eclipse bug data (out of 1986 bug reports).