Dealing With Defects: The Agile Way

In agile development, software defects are everyone's responsibility. One tenet of agile is that defects should be fixed "as soon as possible" rather than documented as an inventory of "stuff" that doesn't work yet. Janet Gregory examines the sometimes vexing question agile teams have for dealing with a defect-should we "fix it now and forget it," "fix it now and track it," or "record and track it?" She explores why, regardless of which choice is made, you should write a test case to verify the fix is correct. Find out how those test cases can become a valuable record about defect history. Learn ways to track defects in a simple system to help the agile team discover process problems and potential improvement opportunities. By dealing with defects effectively, your team will be able to shift its focus from defect repair toward defect prevention.