How Do Engineering Teams Handle Bug Triage Without Falling Into Chaos?

From what I’ve seen, it turns chaotic mainly because ownership gets a bit blurry as the team expands. With just a few engineers, everyone knows who is responsible for what, but once you hit a team of 15 or more, bugs can linger if no one is clearly in charge of triage. A lack of a single reporting channel and ownership just leads to chaos.

We stick to a single channel for reporting issues, which helps streamline the process. The product owner ultimately decides how to prioritize these bug reports just like any other project task.

As the manager of a firmware team, we have two people in charge of triage: a tester for reproducing issues and a developer for reviewing code. We don’t have formal meetings; we typically do a high-level bug overview before assigning ownership. Time spent on bugs varies based on customer impact and risk assessment. Some bugs are minor, while others that can’t be reproduced might take a while, depending on the customer.

In our setup, all bug reports have to go through a system we call Service Now. If a user tries to report a bug elsewhere, we’re just supposed to direct them to the right place. Once a ticket is logged, it's routed to the appropriate team. I usually step in when it reaches the Level 3 application support stage. The product owner then decides the priority of the issue. But honestly, we can go for a month or two without any new issues coming in for the apps my team supports.

I see this as tech debt. We prioritize bugs based on how many people are affected and how tricky it is to uncover the root cause. Everyone on the team should share some responsibility for handling bugs. If you can’t spend at least one day a week tackling these issues, it feels like you lack confidence in your product.