Why Having a Unified Defect Tracking Process Matters

May 15, 2012

Focus on Quality

A defect tracking process is a critical component of product development and application lifecycle management, as customers and users are often the first people to identify problems. Frequently, they share these issues with customer support people and other times they share these issues with sales people. Many companies struggle to effectively capture this information in a way that can help guide the product development and quality assurance team’s priorities and future task lists. Consequently, many product development teams under-utilize this data and this results in missed opportunities to:

  • Reduce product development costs by being able to more effectively prioritize the product backlog according to user needs;
  • Boost customer satisfaction, as the product will be more reliable; and
  • Increase profits by means of decreased production and management costs and an improvement in product quality which should translate into an uptick in sales.

This problem can be resolved by adopting a company-wide unified defect tracking tool and standardized procedure for collecting feedback and product defect information that can be easily interpreted by the product development and quality assurance teams. Stickyminds.com provide a great resource for helping a team identify an appropriate tool at http://www.stickyminds.com/sitewide.asp?Function=edetail&ObjectType=MOVED&ObjectId=2993.

Below are tips on how to select an appropriate defect tracking tool and implement a unified defect tracking process:

  • Find a defect tracking tool that is capable of managing your current defect reporting workload and is also capable of scaling with your organization over time. This will allow you to build a process that can endure over time.
  • Develop a coding system to track the various types of defects, so that defects can be easily measured by all individuals within your organization that interact with customers. This will make the data more useful and meaningful for your product development and product lifecycle management teams.
  • Educate the individuals who interact with customers on the useful information that needs to be attained in a defect report and develop a standardized set of language for these individuals to use in reporting defects. This will make the data more useable for the product development team.
  • Keep the process simple. The more complex the process is then the more likely for communication disconnects to develop in the reporting process.
  • Force all defects to be reported through this channel regardless of the team that finds them. This includes quality assurance and product development team members as well. This will ensure that all defects are tracked in one location and can be easily managed and analyzed for prioritization.
  • Create a corporate culture that focuses on quality by regularly recognizing important bugs identified by various members of the organization and consider rewarding them.

For more information on implementing a best-in-class defect tracking process, refer to Seapoint Software’s white paper on best practices for effective defect tracking.

Marketing Manager, Pricing Strategy

<strong>Brandon Hickie</strong> is Marketing Manager, Pricing Strategy at <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/">LinkedIn</a>. He previously worked at OpenView as Marketing Insights Manager. Prior to OpenView Brandon was an Associate in the competition practice at Charles River Associates where he focused on merger strategy, merger regulatory review, and antitrust litigation.