Connecting Practice

Given the topic, I feel a need to acknowledge that I have to thank the owner of Here for software Testers!!!!!!!!!!! – All about Testing and Quality blog at for finding this guide materials, a good information in choosing a bug tracking system. The owner’s post (Saturday, January 6, 2007) influences my thinking to share more details about the topic.

A Bug Tracking System is constructed as a database. Usually it is designed to make bug tracking activities easy for project team to manage their specific bugs, generate reports, and assess the product (under test) situation on a build-by-build basis.

Moreover, a bug tracking system is evaluated usually by the manager for its viability and the results is reviewed by project sponsor or management for adoption. What could strike, inspire, and/or interest the management as positive about the bug tracking system are its features. The “what’s in it for us” reality could lead the management to approve or reject it.

Furthermore, the quality manager must identify and understand the requirements of the system needed to solve their certain problems and/or concerns before s/he can start to evaluate the bug tracking systems. Identifying and understanding these requirements will help him/her to build a list of features that s/he can use to guide his/her evaluations.

The following observation questions could help the quality manager to identify his/her bug tracking requirements:

• What are the different roles and responsibilities of the people who will use the system?
• What is your workflow for managing and resolving bugs? Identify the steps in the process,
  and determine who is responsible for each step.
• What information do you need to track for each bug?
• What reports and metrics do you need?
• Do you need to provide different levels of access to different users?

Further, the identified requirements for the system can be translated into a feature list. the feature list is the standard attributes or criteria of the system against which the quality of the bug tracking system to be measured or rated.

Below provides an example of a feature list that could be used to evaluate a bug tracking solution based on the identified requirements to achieve:

• Adaptability
• Change history
• Version control integration
• Customizable fields
• Ease of use
• E-mail notifications
• Reports
• Security
• Web-based client
• Workflow

The A Guide To Evaluating a Bug Tracking System By Stephen Blair, MetaQuest Software. The rest of this document provides tips and guidelines for evaluating these features. Hopefully these guidelines will help the quality manager choose a bug tracking system that meets his/her requirements.

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