Project Issue Tracking

Alexander Sergeev / May 5, 2016

Every software development project has lots of issues that should be solved in the process of its performance. In this article, we will tell you about project issue tracking and project issue tracking systems. But before doing that it is necessary to find the proper definition for an issue in software development.

Generally, an issue can be defined as anything in the software product that should be improved. Bugs, or defects, as they are also called are the most well-known issues. They are also the worst of issues because they impact the final product negatively. If the bugs are not detected on time, they can ruin the functionality of the final software. However, not all issues are bugs. If the product has some features that can be improved or simplified, they are also called issues. Even the tasks of project management are often defined as issues.

A project issue tracking system is an application created to detect issues, track them, and fix them. Usually, such applications are used by software development teams at the stage of product testing. When the final or intermediate product is almost ready to be delivered it should be tested to make sure that there are no bugs and other issues in it. Modern issue tracking applications are capable of performing software tests automatically. Before they were invented, software developers had to waste lots of time on testing.

The typical template of a project issue tracking process is quite simple. It is based on the project issue tracking plan that is common for all software development methodologies. This plan has four stages.

At first, the software product should be tested. As we have already mentioned, this procedure is conducted automatically. Modern project issue tracking tools detect all defects quite fast, so the process of issue tracking passes to the next stage soon.
After the issues are detected, they should be reported properly. An issue report is a document that contains all necessary information about a certain issue, including the time of its detection and its type. Before the invention of issue tracking tools, the developers had to write issue reports by themselves. Now this process is fully automated.
The next stage is the stage of issue fixing. The developers should fix the issue and conduct an automatic testing procedure once again to make sure that the final product works properly.
After that, the information about the issue is placed on the issue list. This document contains the data on all issues that were detected during the project.