Online applications prevent small businesses from having to rely on less advanced monitoring methods such as email or meetings to receive necessary information.
These inefficient bug monitoring techniques lead to consumer issues, faulty products, and uninformed management among many companies.
A tracking tool is designed to help a company organize product or internal issues which affect the quality provided to consumers.
An online bug tracking tool is designed to assist with the software development process, but may also be customized for other types of issues as well.
The software development life cycle, or SDLC, is the basis for these applications and may be applied in conjunction with project management to prevent missed deadlines or surpassing a set budget.
Businesses can implement a web-based tracking program to save time and money through improved project organization.
Issue Tracking: HostedApplications Support the Development Life Cycle Software development begins with planning out the requirements of a particular upgrade or new project.
Management, developers, and additionally involved parties hold a series of meetings to determine what is needed to accomplish a desired end result.
These requirements are gathered from customer requests, management objectives, or various other sources.
A general requirements list is created from this information excluding any functionality currently not possible.
The next step involves designing both the back end processes and visual aspects.
Tasks may be assigned during every portion of the SDLC process to various staff members.
As each developer completes their portion of the project, they may run multiple tests to determine if it is functioning appropriately.
The developer can use issue tracking in a hosted environment to track the bugs they find during implementation.
Useful information is stored about each bug to make resolution easier on the assigned party.
Status changes are emailed to the team to inform everyone of progress.
Once the developer has completed the implementation code in addition to repairing all found bugs, they then pass the beta version to testing engineers or the support staff for further evaluation.
Newly found bugs are reported in the system so the project manager can assign them to someone on the development staff.
Issue tracking by a hosted provider allows a company to have a beneficial tool without the developers gaining the responsibility of maintaining another system.
The reporting process provides documentation developers use to verify their work and continues until the project is completed.
The SDLC never truly ends, but merely starts over once the solution is deployed.
Additional bugs may be reported as the application is maintained or by the support staff as consumers begin to use the latest product.
Tracking applications provide a centralized storage location where bugs are organized accordingly.
A manager can assign bug related tasks to particular coders who can use these reports to keep everyone informed as they fix the problem.
Defects may be organized based on an individual or by project.
They remain open until the assigned person changes their status.
Any status changes are sent via email and the system keeps a history of all reported items.
Online bug tracking tools increase productivity, are remotely accessible, and help companies advance the reliability of their products.