Introduction to Bug Tracking tools

Oct 16, 2008 · 3 min read en knowledgebase software · bugtracking development ·

At Gioorgi.com we will start a series of articles about bug tracking. As usual, our posts will be short, tight focused and open to comments and improvement.

A software will be full of bugs at some point of its life, and every good developer/project manager must be ready to address these issue. Let's see how to fix them....

A bug tracking software is used by end-user to properly inform development team about bugs. It can be used also for internal house keepking, too. The bug tracking software keeps the bugs organized, and give to the end users the ability to track bug resolutions, without “annoying” developers with emails, calls and so on.

Developer need only to fix bugs, and mark them “resolved” on the bug tracker. The Project Manager will close it, after checking it is working (release of bug fix is not immediate...it can take some times based on release schedules).

The end user will be informed via email when a bug is closed (this it's done via a "monitoring" feature).

For every bug ethere is a lifecycle, based on a simpleworkflow:

Bug borns
Bug is ackowledged and scheduled for resolution
Bug is ifixed
The bugfix is tested by a quality assourance team (this annoying task is done by a project manager sometimes)
The bug is closed, and the documentation is left on line.

Sometimes bug are not true bugs, but features (at Gioorgi.com they are our preferred defects :)

Other times bugs are replica of just solved bugs or are not well explained.

In such situations, the developer explain the misunderstanding and go on.

An end user should always provide a way to reproduce the bug: if the bug cannot be reproduced, the developer will not be able to fix it; it is still useful to signal it, anyway.

Last but not least, bug tracking software can be a very important piece of your business, and what you read inside it is official and sometimes reserved. So keep a polite language, be serious and avoid jokes, because the end user opening the bug is already irritated by the bug itself...

Comment by Bug Tracking Tools 2: FogBugz | Gioorgi.com on 2008-11-19 23:58:03

[...] As we have seen, bug tracking tools are a very important piece of your It infrastructure. Some tools aims to be a storing ticketing system (like Remedy), others a simple bug tracking tool. In this second post we are going to analyze one of them, called FogBugz [...]

Comment by Gioorgi.com » Blog Archive » Percorso Formativo on 2008-11-06 10:41:35

[...] Approfondimenti Bug Tracing Tools [...]

Comment by Rich Goidel on 2008-11-21 17:50:43

Try as I might, I couldn't find a contact link on this site. So, pardon my post here.

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We went for total simplicity, geared at web boutiques, non-techies, etc. Would love your feedback on it.

Thanks!

Comment by Mantis bug tracking tool 1 | Gioorgi.com on 2008-11-12 23:34:25

[...] the previous article we introduced the reader to the bug tracking [...]