Exploring Usability Issues in Bug Tracking Applications: An Empirical Study of Pakistani Software Industry

Abstract

In order to foster successful usage of software applications, usability is an important factor. Bug tracking applications are excessively used by quality assurance teams to manage bugs in software development. In order to support effectively these tools must be highly usable to enhance user experience. In this paper we have conducted a survey on bug tracking applications used by Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) of Pakistan. Our main focus was to understand usability issues in these applications. We used Nielson’s heuristics for evaluation. Our results show that there are some usability problems in open source and commercial bug tracking applications that need to be resolved to better support quality assurance teams