10 Best Bug Tracking Tools List Of 2022
Why do you need a bug tracking tool? Because there’s no such thing as software without bugs.
Unfortunately, these bugs can damage your reputation, cause a loss of revenue, and result in hours of time spent digging through logs in order to find and categorize the defect — which is why every dev team can benefit from bug tracking tools.
By identifying bugs early on in the development process (and if possible, before the end user encounters them!), our teams stand a better chance of being able to make simple fixes with relatively low impact on project timelines and budgets. Likewise, providing an easy way for end users to report bugs to our dev teams helps us modify and enhance our product over time.
Bugs are a necessary evil, but they don’t have to be a pain to deal with. There are dozens of bug tracking tools that help streamline and organize the defect management process. In this review, I’ll explain what features to look for in these tools and the things to consider when trying to choose the right one. I also provide a detailed description of the best bug tracking software I’ve come across, with information on pricing, trials, integrations, pros, cons, and more.
We’ll start with a basic definition of bug tracking and a summary of what defect management tools do.
What Are Bug Tracking Tools?
Compared to a lot of other development tools, bug tracking tools are pretty straightforward: they help developers identify and fix bugs.
What Counts As A Software Bug?
Very quickly, I want to go over the definition of a bug. This is because bugs go by a few different names — what one team calls a bug, other teams might call an issue, error, defect, ticket, fault, problem, or incident. To pick a bug-tracking tool that fits your use case, you first need to have a clear idea of what exactly you consider to be a bug. Having a clear idea will help you choose a tool that does what you want it to do.
Bug vs. Issue
In general, people make a distinction between the concept of a bug and an issue (or use your own terms — maybe you use “defect” and “issue”, etc). Find a simple explanation below:
A bug is generally considered to be a defect (a flaw, mistake, error) in the codebase. As such, the solution involves steps like isolating and reproducing the bug and changing the code base. To fix a bug, developers need information pertaining to its environment, operating system, browser version, etc (here’s a more in-depth definition of software bug).
An issue is generally considered to span a much broader range of potential shortcomings in a project or product — it’s not necessarily related to a problem with your code. Depending on your organization, an issue could be a customer complaint ticket generated through a report from the end user, an entry on the “requested features” list, a problem someone’s identified with your hardware configuration, or a concern from the design team regarding the user interface.
Bug-Tracking Tools vs. Issue-Tracking Tools
In some cases, it’s fine to use “bug tracking tools” and “issue tracking tools” interchangeably, but in some cases, it makes sense to distinguish between them. This is because, for some organizations, issue management really does operate on an entirely different lifecycle from bug tracking. Issue management might be completely focused on the cycle of solving end-user complaints, requests, and questions — it may involve fixing a software defect, but it doesn’t always have to, and its main tasks might fall under the responsibility of a department that’s not your dev team.
What’s The Takeaway?
Simply keep in mind that when you’re looking at bug/issue tracking tools, you might simply want a tool to report and fix bugs (a defect tracker) — or you might want something that falls under the bigger umbrella of issue tracking. Broader issue management tools will generally offer more reporting and management features, along with a greater variety of user roles to capture input from and enable collaboration between customer service, project management, IT, design, etc, comprising an entire issue management system.
What Do Bug Tracking Tools Do? (And How Can They Help You?)
Whether you call them defect tracking tools or bug reporting tools, these tools are designed to bring bugs to your attention in a systematic way, providing as much environment data about bug as possible so it’s easier to isolate, backtrace, categorize, prioritize, and fix. Most defect trackers also provide features to help your teams unify and streamline the communication/collaboration that’s part of the bug fixing process.
In many cases, bug capturing tools are designed to serve a narrower purpose (record and track bugs), and they integrate with task management systems that allow you to perform the surrounding planning and management tasks. Other tools offer a more complete suite of software project management features. I’ve included both types of bug software in this review.
Here Are The Benefits Of Bug Tracking Tools:
- Supply a common, simple interface for sharing files and communication about bugs
- Provide notifications and records to help your team pace, track, and estimate bug-related work
- Provide a searchable database of bugs your dev team can reference in the future
- Automate manual tasks associated with capturing bugs and updating issues
Keep reading on: https://thedigitalprojectmanager.com/best-bug-tracking-tools/.
Originally published at www.thedigitalprojectmanager.com on February 27, 2019.
