"If I went back to college again, I'd concentrate on
two areas: learning to write and to speak before an audience. Nothing in life
is more important than the ability to communicate effectively."
Gerald R. Ford
With all of the advances in science and technology it seems
that one of the basic skills that many have difficulty with is communication.
This causes a serious challenge at the workplace because communication is a basic
building block required for just about everything we do.
For instance think about the last project you worked on.
Whether you were gathering the requirements with product owners, working with the
creative team designing the user experience or working with the technical team
building the architecture and code - this all required one common denominator: good
communication.
One area where poor communication causes a lot of problems
for a software project is bug reports. Good bug reports that communicate effectively
to a developer can make a big difference.
"It doesn't work."
How often have we looked at a bug report and the only information there is something
like "It doesn't work", or "it's broken". If you want to quickly drive your software
developers to Lovecraftian madness then please keep creating bug reports like
this. Poorly written bug reports kill productivity.
Think about it, if you were
to bring your car to a mechanic and say "it doesn't work" how would
they be able to diagnose the problem? You would need to tell the mechanic what
the problem is, details explaining how you observed the problem and what you
expect. In a similar way a good bug report should do exactly the same.
Therefore if you are pragmatic and want to improve in this
area then communicating well in bug reports is essential. So what makes a good
bug report? In simple terms one that clearly explains what the problem is, how
did it happen and what was expected to happen. If a bug report does not satisfy all of these criteria in a concise,
simple manner then it has failed. The
following is a check list for an effective bug report:
- Short Summary
- Steps To Reproduce
- Expected Behavior
- One bug per ticket
- Include Test Data
- Provide Screenshots / Screen Cast
