Why Defect Tracking Should Be A Priority
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Applications are like high-quality stained glass. They require lots of different pieces to come together to form a full picture. If the artist doesn’t check each piece for impurities and inconsistencies along the way, when they ultimately try to piece everything together, it won’t fit in place.
Research shows that for every thousand lines of code the average professional writes, there are upwards of 100-150 serious errors. Without monitoring, the likelihood of many of these issues slipping through the cracks is monumental.
As your team carries their projects through the entire Application Lifecycle, defect tracking needs to be baked into every step. Otherwise, all your hard work could result in a lopsided window that can’t be made whole.
What is Defect Tracking?
Defect tracking is the process of identifying, logging, and managing issues within your application. This could include design flaws, coding errors, or even usability issues that get in the way of user experience.
When you’re developing software applications, it’s important to track any defects that arise during each stage of development, so they can be fixed quickly and efficiently.
Defect tracking tools provide teams with a centralized location to document all the bugs or glitches found throughout their projects and assign them to those responsible for resolving them.
The Benefits of Defect Tracking for Software Quality Assurance
Defect tracking is essential to software quality assurance (SQA). When issues are identified and tracked, teams can identify potential areas of risk that can be addressed before the application goes live.
There are several other benefits, including:
Communication - When the right person is alerted about a bug at the right time, this prevents communication breakdown that can happen when a default is discovered too late and the team deals with stress. Quick solutions keep your team on track and in alignment with agile processing.
Productivity - When all the issues are documented in one place, it’s easy to prioritize them and start working on fixing them. This helps save time and ensures that each bug is fixed as quickly as possible.
Testing - Defect tracking allows teams to track how a bug was found during testing, which helps identify if any areas of the application need more attention or further improvement.
History - Being able to look back at where defects happened and why is an invaluable asset when it comes to improving the development process. These metrics can be used to implement data-driven decision-making at every stage.
Follow Through - When it’s clear who within a team is responsible for each bug fix, solutions are more likely to get found.
With this focus, teams will consistently produce higher quality products with efficient turnaround times. If you’re hoping to operate within an agile process model, knowing about bugs as soon as they’re identified is key.
The Challenges of Defect Tracking
As vital as defect tracking is, implementing it comes with its own set of challenges.
It can be difficult to keep track of all the bugs that are reported and who is responsible for resolving them. If your team isn't using a tool designed specifically for tracking defects, this can become even more complicated.
Knowing which bugs take priority can also cause serious delays. Some bugs may not affect the functionality of the application and can be fixed later, while others may require immediate attention.
Without full integration between tools, teams might be faced with multiple reports for a single bug while other reports get lost in the shuffle. Overreliance on these tools can stifle collaboration, and lead to lack of clarity.
Having one place that can be fully integrated with any tools you’re using and encourage communication between teams is a great way to combat these issues. Stormboard offers a collaborative atmosphere, full integrations, and hard data to work with from each Storm.
How To Set Up Defect Tracking
As you design your Application Lifestyle Management (ALM) strategy, you’ll want to ensure that defect tracking is infused throughout. Here’s a step-by-step breakdown of the defect tracking process to get you started.
Step One: Detection
You can’t fix what you don’t know about. Before anything happens, you need to be able to detect bugs in your system. This can be done by a number of parties including developers, engineers, and users during testing.
Make sure that any and all defects are reported and logged so that the next steps can begin.
Step Two: Assessment
Once a defect is detected, it needs to be assessed. This includes examining the issue in detail and determining its severity. The assessment should be available to stakeholders from all areas of the development process, including developers, testers, and product owners.
The outcome of this assessment will help determine how much effort is necessary to fix the bug, as well as what other tasks might need to be put on hold while work is done to address it.
Step Three: The Fix
After assessing the issue, it’s time to start resolving it. Depending on its complexity, this could involve a number of people from different departments working together.
As work is being done, use the defect tracking system to update stakeholders, so they can keep track of progress and provide feedback as needed.
Step Four: Verification
Once the bug has been fixed, it needs to be verified that all changes were successful. This includes testing both functionality and performance to make sure everything works as expected.
It’s important that results are logged in the defect tracking system for future reference when managing similar issues. These kinds of metrics will be invaluable as you move forward with this project and others like it.
Step Five: Reporting
The final step is to report the outcome of the defect tracking process. This could involve sending out a summary email to all stakeholders, or simply logging the issue in a central repository for future reference.
Whichever reporting process you choose, it should be easy to access and understand so that everyone can quickly get up-to-speed with what’s going on.
Defect Tracking Best Practices
In order to get the most out of your defect-tracking process, here are some tips to keep in mind.
Tip One: Stay Focused
Everything within your ALM strategy should be tied back to the needs of the product. Having a central place with these needs that is available to everyone is key. Stormboard can store ideas and information like these goals visually for quick reference, and team members can comment directly on items with updates.
When you’re tracking every single bug that comes up, it’s easy to get bogged down trying to make everything perfect. That’s why it’s important to know what your goals are and prioritize defect fixes accordingly.
Tip Two: Celebrate Incremental Progress
When you’re developing a framework for identifying defects, make sure you celebrate when progress gets made. Acknowledge small wins and use them as motivation to keep pushing forward.
Digital Transformation takes time. As your team learns about the process and implements it more and more, you'll start to see bigger results.
Tip Three: Leverage Automation
Automation is an incredibly powerful tool for defect tracking. It can help you streamline the process, improve accuracy, and reduce human error. Plus, it will free up your team’s time to focus on other areas of development.
Tip Four: Encourage Collaboration
Defect tracking can be an isolating process, but it doesn’t have to be. Encourage collaboration among your team members and create a dialogue when discussing issues.
Utilize Storms to get everyone involved in finding solutions for problems. This will help ensure that the entire team understands the needs of the product and is working together towards a common goal.
Tip Five: Monitor Your Metrics
When you’re tracking defects, it’s important to keep a record of your progress. Monitor metrics such as defect resolution time or open/closed cases to see how well your system is performing over time.
This will allow you to identify areas for improvement and measure the success of your process.
The Bottom Line
Defect tracking can be a tedious process, but it is an essential part of any successful software development project. Without having all the pieces in place and working together properly, like a perfectly designed stain glass window, the final result may never reach its full potential.
As you continue to develop your Application Lifecycle Management strategy, and strive for Software Quality Assurance, don’t let this key step slip away. With tools like Stormboard, your team will be able to stay on top of any issues as they come. Defect tracking helps ensure every piece fits into place for a polished and cohesive solution.
Stormboard was built to break down barriers and create a collaborative environment across entire organizations. Whether you are in development working through defect tracking, managing user feedback on the product team, or deciding how the latests updates and patches should be communicated — open lines of communication are essential.
Get in touch with one of our experts today and learn more about how you can keep teams and departments connected to ensure your business processes remain efficient and error-free.
About the author:
A programmer by trade, Nick Saraev is a freelance writer and entrepreneur with a penchant for helping people excel in their careers. He's been featured on Popular Mechanics & Apple News, and has founded several successful companies in e-commerce, marketing, and artificial intelligence. When he's not working on his latest project, you can find him hiking or painting.
