Ask Your Dev Team how they track and triage bugs

Your developer should record every actionable bug in an agreed system, assess its impact and urgency separately, and make ownership visible. Security-sensitive reports may need restricted access, but they still need a durable record and an owner. A bug buried in chat is a bug the team is hoping to remember.

The tracking tool matters less than the discipline. You need to know what happened, who it affects, what the team decided, and who is responsible for the next move.

A useful report helps someone reproduce the problem

“Checkout is broken” creates a scramble. “Returning customers using a saved card see an error after pressing Pay” gives the team a place to begin.

A practical bug report usually includes:

• The behavior someone expected and what happened instead
• Steps, account state, device, or other conditions needed to reproduce it
• Screenshots, recordings, error details, or relevant timestamps
• The affected customer or workflow, with sensitive data handled appropriately
• When the problem began and whether a workaround exists

Not every customer can provide all of this. Your developer’s process should turn an incomplete report into an actionable record without making support staff or users speak like engineers.

Severity and priority answer different questions

Severity describes impact. Is the problem cosmetic, does it block one workflow, or does it threaten data or security?

Priority describes sequence. Given business context, when should the team address it?

A typo on tomorrow’s campaign landing page may have low technical severity and high business priority. A crash in a rarely used reporting workflow may be more severe, yet still wait behind an active checkout failure affecting every purchase. Neither label should be assigned by reflex.

The right people need a voice. Developers can assess technical impact and repair risk. Product, operations, support, and security may understand customer reach, contractual commitments, workarounds, or regulatory consequences. Triage combines that information into a decision.

Every decision needs a next step

Triage doesn’t mean every bug is fixed immediately. The team may repair it now, schedule it, ask for more evidence, accept the risk, or decide the behavior is expected.

What matters is that the outcome is visible. A closed bug should explain why it was closed. A deferred bug should retain its impact, owner, and review point so it doesn’t become permanent by neglect. A critical bug should activate the response path you agreed on.

Issue five on hot-fixes explains the emergency path. Most bugs won’t need it, and treating all defects as emergencies makes it harder to recognize the ones that do.

Walk through one real example

Process descriptions can sound excellent in the abstract. Ask your developer to show you a recent bug from report to resolution.

“Where was it reported, and how did it reach the tracker?” Look for a reliable intake path.

“Who set severity and priority, and what evidence did they use?” The answer should connect technical and business impact.

“How did the reporter learn what happened?” Closing the communication loop matters, especially when customer-facing teams are involved.

“Was a test, monitoring rule, or process changed afterward?” Not every defect justifies a new safeguard, but recurring or costly failures should produce learning.

I don’t expect a product with zero bugs. I expect a bug process that replaces noise and memory with evidence, judgment, and an owner. Hold Cuttlesoft to that standard too.

Go build something and expect better from your developer.