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Bug Tracking Software Buyer's Guide
Table of Contents
- What is Bug Tracking Software?
- Is it worth investing in money?
- How does bug tracking software work?
- Before choosing any bug tracking software
- How to select the best Bug Tracking software?
- What are the features of Bug Tracking software?
- What are the benefits of bug tracking software?
- How much does a Bug Tracking Software cost?
- Conclusion
A product life cycle in software industries is comprised of many parts such as planning, development, quality analysis, bug fixation, and final delivery. However, the major part that involves keen observation is third and fourth one. The quality analysis consists of finding out the bugs and then fixing them periodically to give the best user experience. It demands heavy responsibility in the form of working hours and time that directly affects the ROI. However, this can be avoided easily through a Bug tracking software with ease.
What is Bug Tracking Software?
A bug tracking software is a program that self analyzes a software application to detect the bugs affecting the quality performance in the future long run. It tracks the bugs down and helps in clearing them with little manual effort. The software comes in a customizable format to address the need for individual requirements.
Is it worth investing in money?
Consider the case of manual testing through a team of two testers – a junior tester and a senior tester. On average, a junior tester charges $20 per hour and a senior tester charges $35 per hour. Combining the two, the total cost may come around $60 per hour. Now, when it comes to a Bug tracking software, the same will cost approximately $40/ month that too for unlimited users. Now, it does not take a complicated calculation to figure out that a bug tracking software can help you save a lot of money on a yearly basis. Moreover, with software by your side, you can perform the QA faster than the manual process that too with zero chances of human errors to surface. That will reduce the total man-hours and would enable the firm to invest the same on other projects to gain additional profits.
How does bug tracking software work?
It has a dashboard through which it can trigger email notifications when a bug is created, attempted and resolved. It labels the severity of bugs and assigns them to testers with pre-defined custom actions. It also automates your SLAs and keeps a log report for future reference.
Before choosing any bug tracking software
If you are new to this software, it is highly imperative to go for free bug tracking software for the purpose of self-analysis. Go for the free trials before selecting any particular software. Also, come up with a budget to avoid falling into the marketing gimmicks while purchasing bug reporting software.
How to select the best Bug Tracking software?
Some best and unique way to find the best bug tracking software
1. IT ALLOWS ALLOCATING FILES CENTRALLY: While conducting a single process, you have to involve many file formats such as images, videos, spreadsheets, documents etc. As each format of these files is not concentrated in one location, it becomes hard to trace or track them. Therefore, you need to pick a software that allows you to put all your files in one central location. You will rarely find any free bug tracking software providing cloud-based services. Although you may have to pay a small cloud subscription charges, it’s a smart step for every organization.
Some software includes features that send notifications to employees whenever an upload takes place. Uploaders can also add some specific comments to the uploaded file for better understanding and future references.
2. SEAMLESSLY INTEGRATES WITH THIRD-PARTY APPS: We have reached a digital era which has significantly eliminated the requirement of possessing an internal storage space. The cloud-based apps such as Google Drive, DropBox, and Your Box etc. enables us to upload humongous amount of files and access them with ease. Most companies maintain multiple cloud platforms to store their data safely. Therefore, you might require a bug reporting app that seamlessly works with other cloud-based storages.
3. TRACK OLD FILES SEPARATELY: Ideally, you often allow a note, date, and information of the user in a file you created. It helps you to track your progresses on a specific file. When you compare both versions of the same data, you can quickly figure out the changes you did and how much specific the differences are. Hence, it’s essential to select a bug tracking app that let you maintain your earlier and current versions of files without any hassle.
4. LET YOU ACCESS DATA FASTER: Easy accessibility offers immediate results and escalates productivity rapidly. A bug tracking software with advanced search features allows you to search your desired files based on their names, formats, and titles. Every minute you save adds up to your productivity and efficiency.
5. UNIQUE AUTOMATION FEATURE: The crux of using an application is to make your tasks easier. Rather than wasting time notifying everyone manually, choosing a bug detection software with automation feature is a worthy investment. An automation feature automatically sends an email notification to the concerned party regarding all bugs issue.
You can modify the notification pattern as per your requirement. All you have to do is create some rules setting your software to take specific decisions when a particular situation arises.
You can also add some custom functions to the bug reporting software when the situation heightens to an upper level. Notifications work great in a daily run, but emergencies require the immediate attention of the manager and higher authorities. With custom notification, you can notify the concerned parties with an SMS along with stating the issue in details at the comment section.
What are the features of Bug Tracking software?
Basic Features you will find in Most bug tracking software
1. EFFECTIVE SUBMISSION OF BUGS: It’s easy to lose a bug while submitting. Therefore, active submission is necessary as sometimes a small bug can create a tornado of troubles. It’s crucial to select a bug reporting software, which assists you for detail submission and keeps your customers informed whenever required.
Select an application that allows you classify bugs and enables you to log them according to their severity. Some apps allow you to attach a bug description file while submitting them. It also allows you to notify authorities when the status of a bug changes. You can export all your bugs in one single file format if you opt for the right software.
An ideal app provides you with a platform to create a concise and summary view of the bug as per your requirement. You can mention crucial ‘actions to be taken’ plans on the ‘concise view’ while describing the plan in details in the ‘summary view’. You can prioritize the bugs and set the most critical bugs at the top priority.
The best app let your schedule a milestone to rev up the bug resolving process. It allows you to group your bugs separately and distribute responsibilities easier. If your App has a dashboard, then you can track live track your team’s progress, thus increasing their efficiency.
2. LIVE DASHBOARD: When you are working with a group, it often becomes stressful to keep up with everyone. A live dashboard feature in the bug control app lets you effectively collaborate with an employee and take control of the situation.
Co-authorization features in apps help you to keep a keen eye about the whereabouts of the project and get instant notifications within seconds of any changes in the project.
You can notify your teams about priority based projects and asks them to work on them promptly. The dashboard also allows you to check the status message of each employee, will enable you to check which project your employees are working on.
3. CUSTOMIZATION AND APPOINTING ROLES: Most big issue tracking software allows users to provide a specific part of access to few employees while keeping some controls to themselves. A manager at the top hierarchy can divide the roles and give special privileges to maintain the company’s working style.
You can assign special access to admins, managers, contractors, and clients to access the user portal and carry out their respective tasks. Your assignee will have the power to submit, assign or work on a specific bug within a matter of minutes. You as the primary controller can track the activities of the assignees.
Cloud-based apps have opened a gate to a myriad of an employee-friendly work environment. Now geographical restriction in work has limited to a mere word only. The work from home concept is gaining traction and companies are adding freelancers and employees around the world. By providing access to clients, you are actually regularly updating them how far their work has been done. You can provide selective access to your clients such as showing them the bugs list.
4. PROVIDE IMAGE PREVIEW FEATURES: Downloading unnecessary images is both time and data consuming. Most bug reporting apps come with image preview features, which let you see an image without downloading it. It helps you with saving thousands of seconds which you probably spend by click and open specific files.
What are the benefits of bug tracking software?
Anything that can make your final product get more refined is definitely worth investing money and a Bug Tracking Software is no exception either. Here are the top benefits of having such an issue tracking software by your side.
› HIGH-QUALITY OUTPUT: It keeps looking at finding flaws in the development cycle through a number of permutation and combination of possibilities and when it finds one, it fixes the same without any hassle. Some bugs are difficult to detect under normal supervision but the software tracks that even thereby guarantees about quality delivery of the final output.
› PROMISES HIGH ROI: The entire purpose of business is to get a high return on investment (ROI). In case of a software development cycle, that is directly proportional on the time spent by the team on fixing bugs and flaws over a period of post-delivery revisions. However, with a bug reporting software system by your side, the team can confidently finish the QA on one go. Thus, a decrease in the production cost via man-hour will give you a big return on your investment.
› REDUCES COMMUNICATION GAP: Through chat interference and email notification, even a free bug tracking tool can provide a better communication channel. It periodically follows up with the testing team and reminds them to fix the bug. As it stores the information inside a central repository system, accessing data on a real-time basis becomes a quick affair.
› PROVIDES DEPENDABLE METRICS: In case of manual bug fixing, the team prepares a data sheet of usually frequently occurring bugs to help them in coming phases. It takes equal sweat and labor to prepare the sheet as looking for new bugs. However, a bug reporting software does that with ease. It creates a dependable metrics of commonly occurring bugs based on recent fixations which can be referred to in future. It will help the team analyze and fix the working methods in order to avoid future occurrence of such flaws.
How much does a Bug Tracking Software cost?
You can start using the software by paying nothing to a free bug tracking software. However, the features will be very limited and will be of little to no use. Subscribing to paid software will however enable you to use the application to its full potential. Now when it comes to pricing, it varies depending upon the number of users and the features. With a minimum of 10 to 15 numbers of users in mind, it will cost $20/month on an average. However, the cost will keep reducing when you plan to switch to big subscriptions. For instance, for the same number of users, a yearly subscription of a bug reporting software will cost around $50/month on an average. However, before zeroing on any software, makes sure it is going to address all your requirements effectively.
Conclusion
Needless to say, a bug tracking software can help you in achieving an error-free output with ease. It not only optimizes your working hours towards delivering a final product but also maintains a log of past errors for future analysis. Also looking from the cost angle, it is worth investing money when compared with per hour rates charged by manual testers in the market. Thus, definitely, one should go for it but make sure to choose the right one by subscribing to a free bug tracking software version. In that way, you will be able to choose the right software that will address your requirements with ease.