I'm curious about the experience others have with bugs in production. My team utilizes unit tests, integration tests, CI/CD, and manual testing, yet we're still encountering several bugs each week, as reported through Sentry. I'm interested in how often other teams see bugs, how they manage reporting these issues back to the development team, and any tips for navigating the complexities of inter-team communication when passing work along. Aside from simply opening a ticket, how do you handle the potential awkwardness of working with another team?
2 Answers
We definitely see bugs, mainly edge cases that slip through the testing process. The trick is to make sure you add tests for the missed edge cases right after you encounter a bug. Over time, this should help reduce the number of incidents you experience.
It really depends on what types of bugs you're talking about. In my experience as a developer, most bugs come through direct reports from users or testers. Our Ops team usually isn't aware of them unless they trigger alerts. Also, consider revising your testing strategy. Are your tests comprehensive enough? Just focusing on single methods without considering the full feature can miss a lot of issues. Personally, I’d estimate we identify about one bug per month overall, though new applications tend to have more bugs initially before stabilizing.
We mainly catch bugs from Ops through Sentry, so they’re often functional. I'm aware we could improve our testing to catch more edge cases, as I think every team feels. I’m just trying to gauge what actually constitutes a concerning number of bugs for other teams.