1. How to Squash Bugs and Influence
Developers

2. Fogbugz
 Used for audits
 Any commits to audited apps need to be tied
to a ticket
 Used for feature requests
 Used to report bugs!

3. Why do bug reports matter?
 Enable devs to find and fix the bug quickly
 Enable QA to verify the bug is fixed
 Enable support to search for known issues
 Gives coworkers information about the fix
 Makes audits easy!
 People from the future will like you

4. So you need to write a ticket...

5. Stop!

6. Search for your issue
 Your issue may have already been reported.
Take a few minutes to search through the
open tickets.
 “similar” or “related” are often not similar and
not related. If you arent 100% sure, its best to
open a new ticket.
 If existing tickets are well written, you should
be able to be 100% sure. If they are poorly
written, then this task becomes very difficult.

7. Opening a new ticket

8. Mozilla bug report guide
“Steps to reproduce are the most important part
of any bug report. If a developer is able to
reproduce the bug, the bug is very likely to be
fixed. If the steps are unclear, it might not even
be possible to know whether the bug has been
fixed.”

9. Clear summary
 Good: "Cancelling a File Copy dialog crashes
File Manager"
 Bad: "Software crashes"
 Good: "Down-arrow scrolling doesn't work in
<textarea> styled with overflow:hidden"
 Bad: "Browser should work with my web site"

10. Show me
“One of the very best ways you can report a bug
is by showing it to the programmer. They
know that software like the back of their hand.
They know which parts they trust, and they
know which parts are likely to have faults.
They know intuitively what to watch for.”

11. Be precise, make no assumptions
 Imprecise: "Open Gmail in another window".
 Precise: "Press Cmd+N to open a new
browser window, then type
https://mail.google.com/ in the address bar and
press Enter".
 Imprecise: "It doesn't work"
 Precise: "Instead of showing my Inbox, it
shows the message 'Your browser does not
support cookies (error -91)'."

12. Steps to reproduce
 Should be reproduceable by anyone who can
read!
 Do not assume context
 Explain it like I'm 5
 Be ready to provide more information
 “The first aim of a bug report is to let the
programmer see the failure with their own
eyes.”

13. Thats it! You're done!

14. No really, you really are done.
 Clear summary
 Steps to reproduce!!!
 Objective information

15. That's funny, it did it a moment ago
“Say 'intermittent fault' to any programmer and
watch their face fall.”

16. Intermittent Problems
 Very difficult to debug
 Will likely need more information
 If you have an intermittent problem, make sure
you include this information!

17. What NOT to include in a ticket

18. "I think the tachyon modulation must be wrongly
polarised."

19. “This is awful and the world is about to end and I
hate your software”

20. “Client XYZ hates us and this is their #1 priority”

21. “The response needs to be formatted like this.
This will fix the problem.”
“We just need to add feature X and this problem
will go away”
“We are using the wrong encoding, we need to
be encoding it like this”

22. Do include
 Clear description of the problem
 Steps to reproduce!!!
 Objective information

23. Do not include
 Speculation
 Complaining
 Panic
 Solutions

24. Questions?