Software Problem Description Patterns

The development of SPDL (page 399) requires extending pattern-driven analysis approach to software problems such as software defect and software incident descriptions. Such a pattern language should help with accurate problem identification and problem resolution through software behavior analysis and with choosing, for example, appropriate workaround patterns¹¹⁰ or, for a debugging strategy, unified debugging patterns¹¹¹. This can also be applicable to software security incident descriptions as well.

We introduce the first pattern called Problem Summary. This is a very short description that summarizes the essence of the problem from a submitter point of view such as a software user or a technical support engineer. Whether it is correct or incorrect is another problem itself but the missing summary usually requires close reading of the whole problem description text and analyze together various relevant parts to reconstruct the summary.

¹¹⁰ http://www.dumpanalysis.org/blog/index.php/workaround-patterns/

¹¹¹ http://www.dumpanalysis.org/blog/index.php/unified-debugging-patterns/