Top 7 Bug Management Tools Every Product Manager Must Be Aware Of

Key takeaways:

• Why should you concentrate on bug management?
• Top 7 bug management tools a PM must use.
• What are the advantages and disadvantages of tools?

For the success of a product-based company, its product development team must work hand-in-hand with the product managers. It directly relates any failure for the PMs is direct to the development team’s failure. Product managers, when working in a tech field, work hard to boost the management. You should know that for a PM, the eradication of bugs from the software/product is the foremost responsibility. 

Why Should You Concentrate on Bug Management?

While developing software for your client, as a developer, it’s your job to ensure that it’s properly checked via various bug tracking tools. And in case any bug(s) appears, they should manage it at the earliest. Basically, a bug is any fault product that restricts its overall performance. An unmanaged bug in any software gives rise to the following consequences.

1. It ruins you and your company’s rapport in the market.
2. It lowers the company’s revenue.
3. The developer has to again spend his valuable time in treating the bug and in the worst scenario, build the software again.

Hence, bug management is another important phase of a successful software development process that needs attention. It not only reverses the above consequences but also upswings your career.

Top Bug Management Tools

Here top 7 bugs management tools a PM must use are as follows:

1. Jira

As a PM, you should go with Jira, a product and bug management tool by Atlassian. The tool allows the team to figure out, organize, report, and mend bugs in the easiest way possible. You will find Jira mostly in Agile project development. 

Pros:

• It offers a rich set of features like Scrum, Kanban boards, roadmaps, Agile reporting, etc.
• You can customize your workflow and connect the tasks as you wish in a preferred manner.
• It can easily integrate with other products. Hence, it boosts productivity and automates the task.

Cons:

• Jira is quite expensive for small-scale businesses.
• It’s difficult to master Jira and implement it.

2. Asana

Asana is another prominent bug management tool that offers an overview of the team’s work using roadmaps. In this way, you can set long-term goals and achieve them. Like Jira, Asana also allows the team to figure out, organize, report, and mend bugs at a single place.

Pros:

• Instead of receiving all the required information from outside channels, you can keep that information in one place.
• With Asana, you can assign a specific bug to an individual and track his/her progress in mending it.
• You can keep the team focused on treating the most important bug in the software that can hinder the progress.

Cons:

• Since Asana offers numerous features, if you’re not a pro at project management, Asana’s “feature-overload” syndrome can harm you.
• If several members are working on a single problem, using Asana can consume much more time.

3. Wrike

We know Wrike for its modest UI and features like team collaboration and product management. These features aid teams in controlling time, tracing project’s dependencies, managing assignments, and resources.

Pros:

• Thanks to the use of tasks, the members can seamlessly co-operate and get detailed notifications of each other’s progress.
• You can integrate the tool with your email and label other members, send updates, comments, and feedback on projects.
• No need to integrate or use any external software/tool.

Cons:

• Wrike slows down the overall process when the tasks are big. Big tasks are harder to break into smaller tasks.
• Similar to Jira, Wrike is very much developed. Hence, it can be difficult to navigate quickly through various options.

4. Trello

Trello is more than just a bug management tool/program. It’s the best project management tool containing boards and these boards display cards (task appears inside these cards). In Trello, you can assign a project to several people. Anyone can add comments, checklists, etc.

Pros:

• The boards are very convenient to visualize, manage, and navigate. In this way, the client can track the project’s progress.
• In Trello, you can categorize bugs with labels like minor, major, critical, trivial, etc. You can also colour code the bugs/cards.
• You can attach files, screenshots, files to your card.
• This is one of the best features of Trello. You can set a due date for every task separately on the card. This manages your time too.
• Trello can easily integrate with Slack, GitHub, etc.

Cons:

• Although Trello features multiple boards and cards, as the number increases, the board may appear as crowded.
• Trello doesn’t have time tracking capabilities.

5. Kanbanize

You will find Kanbanize mostly in Agile project development. It is suitable for teams of any size and keeps a track of the ongoing projects. It comes equipped with features that provide support from the initial phase to the end-stage. 

Pros:

• Kanbanize’s functionalities can be increased by integrating it with other systems supporting teamwork.
• It is the easiest tool to start with.
• With Kanbanize, it’s practical to record any JavaScript errors on the client-side the moment they occur.
• The tool provides visual information about every project.

Cons:

• Its layout needs an upgrade to meet the modern requirements of an organization.
• It offers no budget management option.
• It can’t be used without an active internet connection. Being offline, no one can check what’s happening or suggest changes.

6. Notion

Notion offers management, unification, and collaboration for every development team within the organization.

Pros:

• The notion works seamlessly at home and at the office. It’s reliable, stable, and portable.
• It takes a few seconds to create an Agile board and convert it into a table to be shared with the team members and clients.
• Being a cross-platform tool, your team members and the client can access it from Android, iOS, macOS, Windows, etc.

Cons:

• Notion can’t be integrated with other business apps like GitHub, Slack, SalesForce, etc. This can limit the productivity of the team and organization.
• It has the option of collecting information missing.

7. Airtable

Out of today’s 7 bug management tools, this is a cloud-based project management tool with services available for small, medium, and large teams as well as for departments. It does everything in a spreadsheet format. Airtable can be utilized as a CRM, project planner, etc.

Pros:

• In Airtable, you can view the bugs either on the KanBan board or in a grid.
• For certain conditions, the formula automatically changes.
• You can add various types of attachments to the bug-like GIFs, screenshots, comments, etc.
• Airtable allows the filtering of bugs according to their priority and status.

Cons:

• Airtable lacks the time tracking feature.
• One needs ample practice before getting started with the tool.

Conclusion

So, these 7 bug management tools are a must for successful bug tracking and management. Although every tool has its own pros and cons, selecting one from the above list definitely depends on your team size, nature of the bug, the client’s role, and involvement.

Also Read: 10 Open Source Bug Tracking Tools