What is a Bug Tracking System?
To understand what bug tracking system is, it is necessary to give the definition for bugs and other notions related to the topic.
Generally, a bug can be defined as an error in the product’s code. Bugs may lead to improper work of the developed software. That is why they must be detected before the final product is provided to the customer. Software development teams usually associate bug tracking with the process of testing. Some methodologies of software creation, like the traditional Waterfall methodology, have a special stage in every project when the tests are conducted.
Usually, this is the final stage of project’s realization. However, in some cases, such an approach to testing and bug detecting may lead into trouble. That is because of the fact that it is hard to fix something in the final product when it is almost ready. Of course, there are also methodologies with a more flexible approach to testing and bug tracking. These are usually Agile methods, where bug tracking is conducted constantly during the project’s realization. For example, in Scrum, it is conducted at the end of every sprint.
Bug tracking is an important stage of software testing. Usually, the bugs are tracked with the help of special software. There are lots of such applications in the modern software industry. All of them were designed to make the work of software developers easier.
What is a bug tracking system?
Bug tracking systems are applications that help the teams of software developers detect bugs, report on them, and create bug lists. The main principle of the bug tracking system’s work is quite simple. Every bug tracking process is subdivided into several stages.
- First of all, the bugs must be detected. It can be done in two different ways. The first of them is based on the customer involvement. It gives the final users a chance to detect bugs and report on them. The second way of bug detecting is based on the product’s testing by the team.
- After the bugs are detected, they must be reported on. The developer or user must notice the type of bug and time of its detection in the bug report. It is necessary to realize how to fix it.
- The next stage of bug tracking is fully dedicated to bug fixing. At this stage, the developers must find a way to fix the detected bug, and conduct all necessary operations to do that.
- After the bug is fixed, the product is tested repeatedly to make sure that now it works properly.
- At the final stage of bug tracking, all the data on the bug is placed on the bug list to avoid its occurrence in the future.
