What is Software Issue Tracking

Automated tools are often used to support software development workflows. Many of these tools are aimed toward a development workflow that relies implicitly on particular supported roles and activities. Developers may already understand how a tool operates; however, developers do not always understand or adhere to a development process supported (or implied) by the tools, nor adhere to prescribed processes when they are explicit. This chapter is aimed at helping both developers and their managers understand and manage workflows by describing a preliminary formal model of roles and activities in software development. Using this purely descriptive model as a starting point, the authors evaluate some existing tools with respect to their description of roles in their processes, and finally show one application where process modeling was helpful to managers. We also introduce an extended model of problem status as an example of how formal models can enrich understanding of the software development process, based on the analysis of process roles