D-E-F-E-C-T, Find Out What It Means To Me
Monday, July 30th, 2007 by The DirectorIf you’re in the software industry and you actually, you know, run the software (which excludes most managers, client facing people, technical writers that produce the manuals, many developers, and some quality assurance professionals whose jobs rely upon creating pretty reports with neat statistics), you’ll probably encounter an issue, otherwise known as a defect or a bug, with your application or Web site. What should you do? If you ask a developer, he’ll probably tell you don’t do that. However, you should probably log an issue or otherwise report the problem so that your organization can earnestly act as though it’s going to fix the problem.
Many organizations create elaborate procedures to trace the defect’s accountability and to standardize defect report information. Many software packages ensure that users enter the same sorts of information for a defect report, but those expensive applications do nothing to audit the quality of the report that the users enter. Some organizations just use spreadsheets and misplaced e-mails in lieu of spending money or installing Bugzilla. Regardless of what technology your organization uses, the quality of the content within the defect report is more valuable than the most rigorous procedures in handling the defect report.