How to report bugs correctly

In the midst of concentrated activity, programmers get distracted by Skype questions. Sometimes an answer is enough, but sometimes it turns out that there is a bug in a project that needs to be fixed, and we begin to clarify the details, create a task in the bug tracker, agree on deadlines for solutions. And when we return to the interrupted task, we find out that forty minutes have passed. And then the manager asks: “Why did you estimate the task at seven hours, and perform the second day?”

Dear customer! When a problem is detected on a project and you want to report it to the chat quickly, remember the following.
Time in money If you make the point unclear or confused, it takes extra time to figure out the details, which you pay for. In this case, one or more employees are distracted from the ongoing cases.

The illusion of urgency can be created. For example, the developer will try to reproduce the specified defect, without waiting for answers to clarifying questions, and immediately try to fix it, which is good if the problem is critical, bad if it is minor (and there are more important tasks), and very bad if you did not plan to fix it at all.
The opposite situation is also possible: the problem discussed in Skype can stay there. Many employees rightly believe that solving a problem begins with setting the problem in the bug tracker. Skype is only a communication tool where you can quickly discuss an ongoing project. Tasks, comments, and decisions are recorded in bugtracker. Debatable situations are resolved in bugtracker, too. In other words, if you are going to Skype something like “it would be nice to do so…” and then, a week later, become indignant as to why it has not yet been implemented, please do not.
If you don’t start a task in the bug tracker, we will. Then we must make sure that what you say is correct.

What must be done?

So, there is a problem, which must be declared. The first thing you specify when you start the task is the title, when you first look at it, you must know what happened. The headline should answer three questions.

“What?” – What actually happened?

“Where?” – where in the interface do you see the problem?

“When?” – under what circumstances does the problem manifest itself?

Here are examples where the header doesn’t answer any of the above questions.

“Nothing is working again” – it’s not clear what exactly is not working.
“Unclear button” – no comment.
“Login and password” – please don’t have a headline like that.

Examples where the header answers only part of the questions.

“Site’s layout is flying off” – it’s clear that the site has errors with the layout, but it’s not clear what the point is.
“Different text layout” – begs further questions, because it’s still unclear what this is about.
“Dashboard graphics glitch” – something happened on the Dashboard screen, but it’s not clear what to count as a glitch. More questions will arise.
“Not displaying some messages in the Dashboard” – the header can already be considered good. It lacks information about which messages and under what circumstances are not displayed, but finding out takes time, and the error should be reported sooner.
“The first time I can’t switch from My Cameras to the Guest Access tab” – it would be helpful to clarify under what circumstances this happens: the developer may not be able to reproduce the problem.
“Failed to send Issue” – not bad.
“The ability to configure cinemas has disappeared in the administrative area” – a case where an answer to the question “When?” is not required.

Examples of good headlines that answer “What? Where? When?” questions.

“Not all messages delivered as push are displayed in the LC” – it’s immediately clear where to start debugging.
“IE 8 constantly swears at the ad submission form from step 1” – it’s only unclear what is meant by “swears” here, but by opening the ad submission form in IE 8, we can see everything.
“In the filter panel, the price is not “initialized” when the price filter is set” – you can open the code section responsible for the price filter and see what’s wrong there.
“When viewing a recording, the rotation buttons are still available” – there is no point in rotating the camera in video recordings, so they forgot to remove the rotation buttons, we will fix it soon.
“Bypasses the limit on the number of private ads by entering a direct link in the address bar” – everything is clear, we’ll add redirection.