What are some of the tips to help improve a bug tracking system? In order to successfully deliver software with high quality, it is advised that you should have a bug tracking system in place. The bug tracking system can function as a centralized location where people and teams can submit their bugs. It won’t be helpful if these submissions are handled individually by the respective team members. This is why it is important to set up the proper systems for handling these submissions and actions on the platform itself so that your software will be delivered efficiently and effectively with error-free delivery.
Useful Tricks And Tips To Help Improve A Bug Tracking System
1) Make sure to keep track of your users.
It’s an important aspect of any bug tracking system to have a good idea of who the users are and what they expect from it. If you don’t know who your users are, it won’t be easy for you to figure out what kind of feedback they will provide because they’re not all going to be the same. You need to make sure that you capture information about them like their job descriptions and other details that will help in knowing what kind of feedback they’ll give.
2) Keep track of various issues rather than just one or two.
While you’re at it, make sure that you focus on providing a list of issues and not just one or two try to gather as much information about them as possible. For instance, if your software application is helping people in their daily lives, it will be useful for them to know what bugs have been reported against different features like a categorization of those issues would work best.
3) Make sure to check the usefulness of small bug reports.
Another thing that you need to check is whether or not the small bug reports are working against your core goal. For instance, if you’re releasing software to your customers and they are asking you to fix a few small bugs here and there, instead of fixing them right away make sure that you check with them whether or not those bugs are impacting the experience that they get in using your product. Even if you find out that they’re not actually affecting their use of the application but they just like to have a bug free experience, let them know that you’ll take care of it when it’s done with its primary goal.
4) Check for duplicate bug reports
Duplicate bug reports can cause issues if left unchecked because sometimes those duplicate bug reports can be contradictory in nature. So, what you need to do is to check the bug reports and intersection them with all of the data that you have. If there are issues with them then let the stakeholder know so that they can either ignore those reports or fix it as soon as possible.
5) Don’t try to do everything all at once
It’s easy to get carried away by new tools and features when you’re trying out a bug tracking system for the first time but it’s best not to get too excited about them until you actually try them out for a while. So, make sure that you take your time in actually using these tools and features before deciding that they’re not helpful in some way or the other.
6) Try to understand the different types of bugs
Bug reporting is going to be a lot easier if you understand the different types of bugs out there. There are several tools that can help you in identifying these different types of bugs depending on what the application actually does. For instance, if the software application is handling your orders then it would be important for you to know how to let them know about errors that might occur during the order process and how these would impact your users. Make sure that you choose a tool that will help you with organizing and categorizing your bug reports depending on what kind of issues they are. Based on this categorization, you can filter out reports that might not be important for your application as a whole.
7) Make sure to use a good search tool when using the bug tracking system
There are several search tools available that will help you in tracking down bugs and managing them on a daily basis. However, the best way to ensure that these search tools work is to make sure that you update them with the latest features and improvements to your application so that it can find bugs faster. This way, your efficiency and productivity would increase a lot as well.
Possibly the most overlooked aspect of bug tracking is how to make it useful for both the applicant and the reviewer.
Conclusion
As a developer, you have probably spent countless hours developing and debugging your software application. You have probably submitted it to dozens of beta-testers who have given you feedback on how they use it. Yet, your primary goal as a software developer is to make money or solve the problem or create money by solving another problem. A bug tracker can help consolidate the testing and fixing problem and give visibility to the entire team.
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