The rigorous and efficient method of discontinuous deformation analysis (DDA) by Shi has been widely used in geotechnical engineering due to its advantages in calculating discontinuous deformation and large displacement including sliding, rotating and opening. However, some precision problems inevitably occur in the early stage, and follows mountains of work done by Shi and many other scholars in order to explain and solve these precision problems. In this paper, the research findings of the scholars in the world are summarized, and the effectiveness and efficiency of the improved methods are discussed mainly in the following five aspects: (1) Precision control of stress-field inside the DDA blocks; (2) Improvement of contact handling method among blocks; (3) Reasonable selection of artificial parameters; (4) Consideration of energy dissipation; (5) Modification of artificial boundary. Advanced research hotspots and trends are also discussed beyond the above work. Authors hope that this paper can bring some ideas for further development and improvement for the DDA method.