Why have bug tracking when you can use post-its ?

I came across a weird article today. It's entitled Why Bugs should not be Tracked and the basic premise is that it's a bad idea to use bug tracking software.

What struck me as really strange about this article is the final conclusion. After telling us how bug tracking is bad and unnecessary, the author offers an alternative: write your priorities down on a piece of paper. In other words, do the extremely low-tech version of what bug tracking software is for. Say what?

The real problem that this article addresses is that bug tracking systems are easily abused. It's easy to enter bugs and just let them sit there until the end of time. However, if you're using something like a piece of paper or a spreadsheet, you have to dispose of the "stale" issues in one way or another, otherwise the whole thing becomes completely unmanageable.

There's an easy response to that, though: "Don't abuse your bug tracking system." Don't let bugs pile up. Categorize sanely. Do some house-cleaning when the number of outstanding bugs gets too big for comfort. It's not rocket science, just use the tool productively. Agile development is all well and good, but sometimes it seems like they're throwing the baby out with the bath water.

You can reply to this entry by leaving a comment below. This entry accepts Pingbacks from other blogs. You can follow comments on this entry by subscribing to the RSS feed.

Add your comments #

A comment body is required. No HTML code allowed. URLs starting with http:// or ftp:// will be automatically converted to hyperlinks.