A Systematic Survey of Just-in-Time Software Defect Prediction

Abstract

Recent years have experienced sustained focus in research on software defect prediction that aims to predict the likelihood of software defects. Moreover, with the increased interest in continuous deployment, a variant of software defect prediction called Just-in-Time Software Defect Prediction (JIT-SDP) focuses on predicting whether each incremental software change is defective. JIT-SDP is unique in that it consists of two interconnected data streams, one consisting of the arrivals of software changes stemming from design and implementation, and the other the (defective or clean) labels of software changes resulting from quality assurance processes. We present a systematic survey of 67 JIT-SDP studies with the objective to help researchers advance the state of the art in JIT-SDP and to help practitioners become familiar with recent progress. We summarize best practices in each phase of the JIT-SDP workflow, carry out a meta-analysis of prior studies, and suggest future research directions. Our meta-analysis of JIT-SDP studies indicates, among other findings, that the predictive performance correlates with change defect ratio, suggesting that JIT-SDP is most performant in projects that experience relatively high defect ratios. Future research directions for JIT-SDP include situating each technique into its application domain, reliability-aware JIT-SDP, and user-centered JIT-SDP.