Choosing Lightweight Bug Management Tools for Your Workflow

Most people often feel the need for lightweight bug management tools when they realize that MS Excel, Google Docs, and generic spreadsheets are of little help. If you’re someone looking for such tools that are simple to set up and easy to use, then you’ve clicked on the right link.

Let’s start with the basics.

Basic elements of a lightweight issue tracker

Using a bare-bones solution allows you to get the work done in a variety of applications. For instance, you may need an issue tracker to track bugs. It could be for customer support or simply be for accountability in a small team.

Keeping this in mind, let’s look at 5 features that are a must for any simple issue tracking app:

1. Easy issue creation
2. Issue priority settings
3. Due dates
4. In-app notifications
5. Issue assignments

Using a simple issue tracker

Simple issue trackers are agencies’ favorite as they let managers and only a few employees handle most of the work. In this case, the manager can easily assign a new task to an employee and copy a third person on the progress.

For instance, a project manager wants the app developer to change a line of code. He opens a new issue and names it. The app developer assigned the issue as it’s automatically added to his list as the new task.

The project manager decides to also add the company account manager to the project so that he is notified too. This helps the account manager to communicate the progress effectively.

What do you need in an issue tracker

1. Expectations from bug management tools are entirely up to you. But following are some of the features you should look out for:
2. Assigning team members – You should be enabled to assign yourself or someone else to resolve the issue.
3. Informed parties – You must be able to notify concerned individuals about the progress of an issue and keep them in the loop.
4. Filtering – You will need to filter issues and tasks by responsible team members, tags, priority, status, or due date.
5. Notifications – You must be notified about the changes made to issues that you were copied on or following.
6. Simple reporting – You will need insights into how team members are moving work ahead.
7. Mobile-friendly – Mobile-friendliness allows you to remotely access your work.
8. Release builds – A feature that lets you clear your queue of issues but holds back passing on the notifications to the tester until you’re ready to do so.
9. File sharing – You should be able to easily drag and drop documents and screenshots to add them to the project.
10. Backups – No one wants to lose their data.

These features are core necessities of lightweight bug management tools. Premium features include task dependencies, Gantt charts, time tracking, etc. but tools with these features cost up to 3 times as much as the lightweight tools.

Conclusion

Sign up for a simple issue tracker and escape the hassle of spreadsheets. Pay a few dollars per user per month and enjoy a much smoother issue tracking experience.