A Guide To Evaluating Bug Tracking Software
Abstract
Evaluating a bug tracking system requires that you understand how specific features, such as configurable workflow and customizable fields, relate to your requirements and your current bug tracking process. This article provides tips and guidelines for evaluating features, and explains how these features fit into a defect tracking process.
Introduction
Before you start evaluating bug tracking software, make sure you identify your requirements for the system. Understanding these requirements will help you build a list of features that you can use to guide your evaluations.
To identify your bug tracking requirements, take a look at your current bug tracking process.
- 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?
Once you identify your requirements for the system, you can translate the requirements into a feature list. Table 1 provides an example of a feature list that could be used to evaluate a bug tracking solution
Table 1. List of features to evaluate
Adaptability
Change history
Version control integration
Customizable fields
Ease of use
E-mail notifications
Reports
Security
Web-based client
Workflow
The rest of this document provides tips and guidelines for evaluating these features. Hopefully these guidelines will help you choose a bug tracking system that meets your requirements. Remember, the purpose of bug tracking software is to support your process, not to impose its own.