Bug Tracking Sheet Templates
The word ‘Bug’ when uttered, in front of biologists will mean an ant, butterfly, moth or lice etc. but the same word for software developers, has entirely different meanings and gives an irritating feeling to the latter group. According to the world of computer software, a bug is an error in any software program or application, which hinders its working or alters its required performance. In simple words we can say, a bug is something which generates undesirable behavior in a software program, which can also damage computer hardware, in some severe cases. Bugs arise due to a few known reasons; first being the error by software developer during writing of source code of ‘buggy’ software, second by some compiler which generated an error during execution of such software program.
Now-a-days, software development has grown into an enormous industry. Lives of millions of people are now connected with this business. Application development is a major part of software development industry, apart from evaluation and troubleshooting, and BUGS are a major issue in the development process. To track down the BUGS another type of software has been developed, known as BUG TRACKER. Bug trackers are used to check and identify bugs or issues during the working of a software application. Bug trackers have been developed in various software development languages such as PHP, ASP.NET, C# and Microsoft SQL Server etc. These trackers are available in various structures; as computer installable applications and online website bug trackers. MANTIS (a bug tracker) has also launched MANTIS TOUCH for mobile cellular phones. Bug trackers have been developed for almost every available operating system like Windows, MAC OS, OS-2, LINUX etc. Bug trackers not only find the bugs, but in some advanced bug trackers, options to remove and troubleshoot the bugs are also available.
Like software applications, bug trackers are also used for de-bugging websites and online programs. Such bug trackers identify the bugs in the code of that website and allows the designers to make modifications and corrections as per their desires and requirements.
Bug trackers are available in different forms, from individual to corporate usage. In a corporate level bug tracker, facilities like identification of bugs, fixing of bugs, automated generation of data base of tracked bugs, record of bug reporters, communicating the bugs and issues to the developers and creating release notes etc. are available. Bug trackers are more often implemented in the software development project as management tools, since they help in removing major issues of the software developers, in the earlier stages of the development.
Bug trackers have now become an essential need of the always growing software development industry. With the more complex applications and software being designed each day, the importance of bug trackers is increasing with the same pace. Apart from provide assistance in identification of bugs and problems, bug trackers are also used to perform an important role in the management of bugs and thus evaluate efficiency of a team in any software development industry. Some companies like HP and IBM provide their own bug tracking systems, but others just go along with popular bug trackers available in the market.
