Bug Management: Don’t record trivia.
In a previous post, I was proposing to avoid recording things that the team knows for sure it will never attempt to fix. Things that seem so unimportant as to be trivia and distraction.
The reason I am proposing this is that investigating a defect, finding a way to reproduce it in a controlled situation, prioritising and maintaining it all take time. If the defect is never fixed all that effort is wasted. This should be made very clear by reducing the number of priorities used for defects. We could simply stop recording them. Note that things reported by users would never go into this ‘refuse’ category.
Now I understand that some people are more comfortable with recording everything to keep track of what they did and just in case it becomes important some day. I content that this is the reason why we need five priority levels (in our case) and that recording things when they become important (rather than in case they do) is usually enough to ensure user satisfaction.
What is your take ? Is there real benefit in keeping an exhaustive record of findings ? If you already reduced the number of recorded defects, how did you benefit ?
