Mastering Bug Management (Part 2)

Nikhil Vadoliya
7 min readFeb 4, 2025

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In Part 1 of this series, we explored strategies and patterns for finding and reporting bugs effectively.

If you haven’t read Part 1 yet, we recommend starting there to gain a clear understanding of the overall flow and context.

In this Part-2 we covered

3. Bug triaging

4. Don’t manage bugs: fix them!

3. Bug Triaging

Imagine bug triage as a critical care unit for your product. Just like medical triage, not every issue is a code red, and not every report needs immediate surgery.

What is Bug Triage?

Bug triage is the process of systematically evaluating and categorising reported bugs based on their severity and impact on the software application.

It plays a pivotal role in ensuring that identified bugs are properly addressed, prioritised, and assigned to the right developers.

Why is Bug Triage Important?

  • Optimal Resource Allocation: By evaluating and prioritizing defects based on severity and impact, teams can ensure that critical issues receive immediate attention, making the best use of limited development resources.
  • Prevention of Delays: Addressing high-priority bugs early in the development process prevents potential bottlenecks, ensuring a smoother and more efficient workflow.
  • Enhanced Collaboration: A structured triage process fosters clear communication between testers and developers, ensuring that everyone understands the priorities and details of each defect.
  • Improved Product Quality: By systematically identifying and resolving high-impact bugs, the overall quality, reliability, and usability of the software are enhanced, leading to increased customer satisfaction

How to set up bug triage process

Step 1. Initial Screening: The First Line of Defense

When a bug report lands, think of yourself as a detective:

  • Is this a real bug or a misunderstanding?
  • Has any previous report on this issue been mentioned?
  • Is it an issue arising out of an unsupported version?
  • Has it been caused because of third-party plugins?
  • Can it be replicated?
  • any relevant attachments (screenshots, logs, etc.).

Step 2.Severity and Priority Assignment

Not All Bugs Are Created Equal and equal priority.

P0 Level Priority

These are the emergencies of the software world — the kind of problems that, if not tackled right away, could cause major disruptions, significant user dissatisfaction, or even bring the entire project to a screeching halt.

The development team might need to work extended hours, and additional resources might be allocated to resolve the problem. Typically, all other developments or enhancements are paused until the P0 issue is resolved.

P1 Level Priority

These issues can affect the project’s progress or user experience but typically don’t cause a complete breakdown of functionality.

The team must acknowledge the significance of the issue and plan for its resolution in a manner that is quick and effective, but still maintain the balance with other ongoing tasks.

P2 Level Priority

These are important tasks that need attention but are less urgent compared to P0 and P1 priorities. P2 tasks often involve improvements or issues that have a moderate impact on the project or the user experience.

P3 Level Priority

Think of P3 tasks as those subtle tweaks and enhancements that are more about refinement than necessity. They’re the kind of improvements that polish your product but don’t dramatically change the user experience or functionality.

P4 Level Priority

This level is reserved for tasks that are the least urgent and have minimal immediate impact on the project or product. P4 priorities typically include long-term ideas, low-impact enhancements, or ‘wishlist’ items.

These are tasks that would be nice to have but are not essential for the current functionality or success of the product.

Step 3. Assignment to Developers

Once the bug has been categorised, it’s assigned to the appropriate developer or development team. Developers should have a crystal-clear understanding of the issue and its urgency. Detailed bug reports and ongoing collaboration are key here.

4. Don’t manage bugs: fix them!

Fixing bugs when they happen is the single best approach, but unfortunately not always realistic. The next best thing is to ensure there’s enough time for engineers to fix problematic issues.

Let’s Understanding some approach for this.

1. Fix bugs on the go

Several engineering leaders at smaller companies say their preferred approach is to simply fix bugs as they occur.

This approach seems harder to do at growing or large companies, where some bugs need several teams to fix them, or it’s unclear who owns a bug.

2. Bug expiration dates

A clever approach is to set expiration dates for when a bug should be resolved. The closer this date gets, the higher its priority.

Ruben Weijers, engineering manager at TomTom elaborates:

“All triaged bugs have an end-date and an owner. If a bug is past its end-date (meaning it ‘breaches’ this date), it becomes a release blocker, regardless of whether it’s a low priority bug.”

3. Weekly ‘bug pickups’

Ryan Hanni, engineering director at Ontra:

“We have used a weekly bug pickup process. The way it worked was simple: pick up one bug per team, per week, and fix it! This helped our bug backlog stay reasonably sized. We would always pick a high priority bug until there were none left, then do this with Medium and Low priority ones.”

Weekly bug pickups provide the following advantages:

  • Consistent Progress: Teams make consistent progress by fixing at least one problem each week, which keeps the number of outstanding issues from growing.
  • Prioritisation: By concentrating on high-priority bugs first, you can make sure that the most pressing problems that consumers are facing are fixed as soon as possible.
  • Team Morale: When members observe measurable gains as a consequence of their work, correcting problems on a regular basis may increase team confidence and satisfaction.
  • Improved Product Quality: A methodical approach to problem fixes results in a more dependable and stable product, which enhances user confidence and experience.

Putting the Process into Practice:

  • Arrange Regular Sessions: Set aside a certain period of time every week for the team to work only on fixing bugs.
  • Keep a Prioritised Bug List: To make the selection process move more quickly, keep an up-to-date list of issues arranged by priority.
  • Assign Ownership: Assign certain bugs to team members while maintaining transparency and accountability.

4. Time budgets

A common approach is to fix a percentage of devs’ time to be used for bug fixing on a sprint basis, weekly or monthly.

“We first add bugs onto our sprint, allocating around 10–15% of our velocity. We prioritise bugs reported from our Live/Production environment. This approach means that we balance delivering new features with fixing existing issues.” — Jayesh Varma, lead Android engineer at Barclays

5. Bug sprints and bug days

In the dynamic world of software development, teams use different strategies to manage and reduce bug backlogs effectively. One such approach is the implementation of dedicated bug sprints or bug days where the primary focus is on identifying, prioritising, and resolving existing issues within the codebase.

Engineering leaders have shared various strategies to manage and reduce bug backlogs effectively

“Regular bug bashes and FixIt weeks have worked very well for teams I’ve worked at Uber, Hopin, Craft, and now Manual “— Marin Dimitrov, Head of Engineering at Manual

“just do it” Day

We do a quarterly ‘just do it day’ where all engineers get to work on whatever they want for a day. This usually ends up being quality of life (QOL) improvements, dev tooling, and refactoring/cleanup work. It’s everyone’s favorite holiday! — Maya Ziv, senior software engineer at Pavilion

Continuous Weekly Bug Pickups

“We avoid ‘fix it weeks’ in favor of continuous, weekly bug pickups. If our backlog gets too big, we meet with cross-functional stakeholders (PM, UX, Dev, QE) to divide up the bugs across teams and have them fixed within the next two weeks or so, working the bugs into their cycle as they see fit.” — Ryan Hanni, director of engineering at Ontra

6. Warranty sprints

It’s very tempting in this fast-paced world of software development to just ship the new feature and then move on to the next big thing. But savvy teams know the value of a “warranty sprint,” that dedicated period post-release where all that’s done is fix incoming bugs and user feedback.

“For warranty sprints, we typically don’t shift a team off a project as soon as it ships. We expect and plan for feedback and bugs to be higher volume right after a delivery, and keep the team dedicated to addressing those for a sprint or two, rather than punting all of that to a backlog to be dealt with later.” — Jason Diller, VP of Engineering at Arteria AI

This strategy ensures that the team remains engaged with the freshly released feature, promptly addressing any issues and refining the product based on real-world usage. By planning for this dedicated period, teams can enhance product stability and user satisfaction, turning potential post-launch chaos into a structured improvement phase.

You’ve just level up your bug management game from “swamped” to “superstar.” But hold onto your keyboards, because the adventure doesn’t end here! 🚀

Stay tuned for Part 3 with “Zero Bug Policy” and more suggestion form industry leader.

In the meantime, let’s keep the conversation going! I’m eager to hear your thoughts, experiences, and even your funniest bug stories.

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Nikhil Vadoliya
Nikhil Vadoliya

Written by Nikhil Vadoliya

Senior Product Engineer and Tech Lead with extensive experience. I design user-friendly apps, enhance team efficiency, and simplify technology. Let’s innovate!

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