Reframing bug reports

What if we rephrased bug reports as feature requests? What if there was no distinction between a bug fix request and a feature request? If we zoom out a bit, there is technically no difference between the two. Both are a statement about current behaviour (implicit or explicit) along with a request to change the behaviour.

The only difference between a bug fix request and a feature request, is that something would be considered a bug if there was a reasonable assumption that the current behaviour should never have happened in the first place.

It will likely still be valuable to know whether a given change request is considered to be a bug or a new feature, a label / tag / ticket type (whatever your ticketing system supports) should work just fine for these purposes.

Crucially, normalising the content and format for bug fix requests and feature requests into a single, generalised notation, could help to simplify these processes, such that you don’t have any special cases. Both types are treated in the same way.

We’ve built and deployed a user registration form that doesn’t accept the “+” character in the email address input.

The email address input in the user registration form doesn’t allow accepting the “+” character

Steps to reproduce:

1. As a logged out user

2. When I visit the user registration page

3. And I type “test+1234@test.com” into the email address input

4. Then the email address input has the value “test1234@test.com”

Expected result:

The email address input should have the value “test+1234@test.com”

Acceptance Criteria:

1. As a logged out user

2. When I visit the user registration page

3. And I type “test+1234@test.com” into the email address input

4. Then the email address input should have the value “test+1234@test.com”

Current Behaviour

1. As a logged out user

2. When I visit the user registration page

3. And I type “test+1234@test.com” into the email address input

4. Then the email address input has the value “test1234@test.com”

Expected Behaviour

1. As a logged out user

2. When I visit the user registration page

3. And I type “test+1234@test.com” into the email address input

4. Then the email address input should have the value “test+1234@test.com”

This approach to requesting changes has a few advantages:

1. It releases people from the stigma that often surrounds bug reports (hopefully less, preferably zero, animosity between developers and testers)

2. Moves your mind into more of a “creator” mindset, rather than a “fixer” mindset (at least, it does for me)

3. Simplifies workflows into one model (yes, this is a slippery slope, there’s never one suitable model for all problems)

4. Probably more…

This approach also has a few disadvantages:

1. It feels “odd”, almost like you’re lying to yourself – “I know it’s actually a bug”

2. Most people will be confused by it, it’s not “the way we’ve always done it”

3. Tooling support might make it unreasonable to implement

4. Probably more…

I hope this subtle mindset shift helps you or your teams. It’s had a positive impact in the very limited testing I’ve done.