How to manage a large backlog of bugs

Bugs are very hard to manage. The never-ending list of issues that are reported grows c0ntinuously, sometimes at a faster rate than their closure. There are also those low priority issues we never address from over a year ago. Keeping bugs under control helps decrease clutter in your bug management system, helps keep the team focused, gives a better representation of the state of your applications, and allows for accurate statistics.

To aid with bug management, we can treat them similar to features in an agile process. We groom them, add them to upcoming releases, then address them accordingly. Similar to backlog grooming for stories, we triage each ticket by discussing any further investigations needed and assigning a priority (if it doesn’t have one already). We could technically close tickets as needed on the spot. During sprint planning, we assign tickets to a sprint based on their priority. As part of the sprint, we allocate time to investigate each bug and place it into an appropriate state. That could mean closing bugs as obsolete, not reproducible, or they’re actually issues we’d like to fix in this sprint. Over time, we can ensure our list of issues remains manageable and the result is a cleaner bug management system keeping our team focused.