In the modern workplace where multi tasking reigns supreme, resolving a technical problem without chronicling how it was resolved is a recipe for forgetfulness. Because forging ahead with business leaves little time to detail resolution procedures that can keep business forging ahead, we often hit roadblock whose resolution requires us to set aside our busy schedules after all. In most cases, the more technical the line of work, the more necessary it is to record how particular problems were resolved, an example of which can be seen in the software industry. To develop solutions to software errors and detail how the solutions were arrived at, most software companies use bug tracking software, which allows developers and technical staff to record when a bug was reported, who reported it, its severity and its resolution status. If the same problem arises again, developers can refer to the tracking system and discover an immediate resolution.
Developers use bug tracking software to resolve bugs both before and after a product is released. In the first instance, developers usually focus on resolving bugs that present the greatest threat to a program’s consumer usability. But when a complex software program is released, it usually contains more than a few minor bugs that developers are well aware of. Why? In some cases, certain bugs are left unaddressed because fixing them might result in the creation of severe bugs that significantly compromise a program’s usability. Therefore, considering the commercial importance of meeting a program’s release date, it makes more sense for software companies to find resolutions to the above situation between the time of a program’s initial release and its next scheduled release.
While software developers and their support staff are the ones who officially correct software coding errors, software program consumers also play a vital role in the debugging process. Even as some software bugs are known upon a program’s release, there are usually a number of bugs that are not known, if only because anticipating every chain of software commands that might reveal a bug is nearly impossible. In most cases, consumer reported bugs are relatively minor, but there are also cases where consumers discover bugs that compromise a program’s most basic user aspects. In either case, consumers can be just as responsible for the betterment of software through subsequent releases as developers are.
In times past, software companies used a variety of arcane methods for recording bugs and the information surrounding them, such as manual log books, bug reporting by email and bug reporting by telephone. But if a company issued widely used software packages, using most of these methods meant that most bugs would go unaddressed or become poorly categorized. Today, companies can choose between having an in house bug tracking system or a hosted bug tracking service through an online provider. Because the latter offers companies all the benefits of bug tracking without requiring them to purchase a database for ticket information and then maintain that database, most companies opt for hosted tracking services.
Without issue tracking software, software companies would be left to record and resolve bugs in an untimely and ineffective manner. Far more than a system for simply resolving bugs, bug tracking allows companies to create profiles of bugs that can be referred to for future use. In doing my research for this article, I found a wealth of information on hosted issue tracking software at AdminiTrack.com.
