There’s nothing worse than dealing with an application plagued by bugs. Too many can ruin even the most innovative of concepts. That’s why bug tracking systems are so critical to dev teams. Thanks to them, bugs can be found and fixed quickly and efficiently. Dev teams benefit from the organization these systems provide, and users benefit from the results.
If you haven’t implemented a bug tracking system into your team, consider the benefits below.
1. More proactivity
With a tracking system in place, teams can better monitor their workflow and to-dos. Better time management means team members can make room for proactive product testing for bugs and other issues. Rather than letting a bunch of little mistakes show up in the production phase, teams can resolve them preemptively.
Because bug tracking systems can include the entire team during quality assurance checks, Product, Stakeholders, and other divisions can review and catch bugs. Having early, active input from a variety of sources also helps reduce revisions later on.
2. Deeper understanding
If you join a project already in progress, a data-rich tracking system will help you get up to speed much faster. A quick review of your team’s notes will let you know what kind of progress and pain points have occurred to date.
But bug tracking systems do more than serve as a log for the project; they also provide crucial data for drawing insights about your team’s work process.
Depending on the project, you will want to analyze your workflow from a few standpoints. Consider questions like the following when drawing conclusions:
- Are there any areas of the project that recorded more issues than others?
- Have any platform issues been reported?
- Are QA members offering suggestions?
- How long does it take to resolve a bug?
Also, take note of how the team reports and resolves its issues. Do team members record issues with sufficient screenshots and details? What details (if any) do members include once the issue is resolved?
Taking the time to analyze your bug tracking system can lead to data-backed recommendations that improve team efficiency. And you’ll gain a high-level look at your team and how they operate.
3. Greater focus
Focus is one of the most significant benefits of a teamwide bug tracking system. Working across departments, a bug tracking system keeps teams aligned and up to date on user’s most pressing needs.
That begins with the elimination of redundant reports. With a tracking system, it’s clear which issues are already on the record and what their current status is. And it’s easy to access and follow updates as they occur.
Moreover, teams can easily recognize which tasks are top priorities, and they can reprioritize their work as needed. The prioritization of bugs against other work is invaluable for efficient team collaboration.
While some teams opt for a decentralized system, sometimes using just a dry erase board, these practices make real transparency and knowledge sharing nearly impossible. Team members end up spending more time trying to work out details rather than fixing the issue itself.
4. Better customer experience
While the above benefits combine to improve your projects’ quality and efficiency, the most important benefit is that users gain access to better working products with faster updates and bug fixes. Their satisfaction results in important returning business and word of mouth marketing, not to mention ensuring that your team is proud of the work they produce.
A bug tracking system improves team cohesion and customer satisfaction. That’s the ideal “two birds, one stone” scenario for just about any Project Manager out there.
Teams of all sizes can benefit from these tools, whether you’re managing a single small project or multiple enterprise-level apps. With bug tracking tools, you can manage all of your bugs in one place, tracking progress over time, and glean useful insights along the way.
5. Improve your ROI
When you invest in a quality bug tracking service, like our own Backlog tool, you can reduce your overall cost of development. With everything logged and planned out, it’ll be easier to spot any repetitive issues to fix them all at once or notice patterns with bottlenecks that the team can eliminate.
Your team will also be better able to triage what you’re working on, selecting the most important tasks to concentrate on and fix first. Organizing their time like this, your team will ultimately be able to cut time costs and improve ROI.
Any software organization must have a solid way to handle bug tracking. Spreadsheets and emails don’t last very long when you are trying to constantly stay on top of tracking bugs, communication, and fixes.
Dedicated bug tracking software goes beyond anything you can build for yourself. It is based on case management principles that allow for a standard workflow but put the user in charge of moving each case through different steps and allowing for multiple resolutions throughout the process.
What is bug tracking software?
Bug tracking software allows you to identify, record, manage and track bugs in your software. As issues are identified, they are assigned to engineers who validate the request and work on fixes for them. The software handles how the bug fix moves from person to person while keeping the initiator in the loop.
Bug tracking software is very similar to issue tracking software or defect tracking software. It creates a database of bugs that need to be fixed while giving access to all team members who are tasked to work on them. Simply put, bug tracking software automates the process of tracking and monitoring bugs.
What are the benefits of bug tracking software?
Bug tracking software is extremely important if you have a team that is working on bug fixes collectively. It provides a slew of benefits that can make business processes more efficient.
Here are just a few of the many benefits of bug tracking software:
- It provides a single, easy-to-use interface for sharing files and information about bugs encountered.
- It maintains records and sends notifications to help a team pace, monitor, and track how bugs are fixed.
- It provides an accessible and searchable database of bugs for future reference.
- It automates manual tasks associated with capturing and fixing bugs.
What features should I look for in bug tracking software?
The best bug tracking software should ideally be streamlined to minimize time and resource costs in identifying, isolating, and fixing bugs. Here are some of the key features you should have in your bug tracking software:
1. Reporting facility
Good bug tracking software has a user-friendly interface with customizable fields for gathering pertinent information about the bug. It should include custom fields such as text, drop-down lists, or checkboxes where users can easily input the bug environment, module, severity, etc.
This allows fast and easy categorization and prioritization of issues. You can capture bugs fast, determine the root cause, and fix the problem immediately.
2. Customizable workflows
Choose bug tracking software with customizable workflows that can be adapted to industry-specific needs. Each business has unique requirements and needs unique business solutions.
3. Repository hosting
Codes are what make the software work. Whether you’re working on a software project or managing your business development software, it’s important to have a good source code repository host. Choose a bug tracker that enables source code integration.
4. Seamless integration and collaboration
Your bug tracking software should integrate well with your other digital tools like case, projects, and process management tools. Choose one that can directly export data into your tools so you can manage bug tracking from a single place.
5. Test reports, metrics, and analytics
As with all business processes, it’s important to get insights. This can help you monitor trends and occurrences that may affect work productivity. Your bug tracking software should have dashboard metrics that can easily transform collected data into graphs or charts.
6. Worklog and time tracking
A software that logs users, tasks and the time expended on them makes monitoring of issues and bugs much easier. Check if the bug issue tracking software enables individual and group progress tracking per user, bug type, or product from creation to resolution.
With a trackable history, it’s easier to trace who worked on each leg of the resolution and pinpoint any issues in the process.
7. Smart notification system
For easier progress monitoring, an automated notification system should be included in a bug tracking software. This system keeps the team on schedule by sending notifications through email or other platforms to concerned individuals. Everyone in the team is kept in the loop whenever the status of bug changes.
Where is bug tracking software used?
The basic objective of bug tracking system allows teams to identify defects easily, measure their scope, determine their impact, and manage all the steps involved in resolving them, all from a centralized interface. Bug tracking software is commonly used in software development. Quality assurance teams and software development teams use it to identify, record and monitor errors during an application testing.
Good bug tracking software also enables customers to provide feedback after a product is released. This identifies defects that developers and quality control may have missed or those that may have occurred due to software malfunctions.
Bug tracking software can be implemented as part of integrated project management systems. Some companies now include bug tracking in their general product development process.
Bug tracking software is essential
Bugs are inevitable. Having bug tracking software decreases the chances of wasting valuable time and money resolving software issues
Simple bug tracking software is not just nice to have as add-on features of your core digital workplace, it is critical to ensuring that business processes work efficiently and seamlessly.