Did you ever work on a software project full of bugs? It’s a nightmare to go to current build of an app and see that many features just don’t work.

Or even worst: To see the things that used to work, but don’t work anymore?

How about a team that finds bugs and fixes them right away? One might not be that far from the other.

How to get to Zero Bug Tolerance

It’s an easy Kanban practice we use at EL Passion. Visualize your bugs on your Kanban board. Put them as a notes in different color (red or yellow to make them more visible). Always focus on fixing bugs before doing the tickets.

zero bug tolerance

Do this, don’t do that

  • Don’t store backlogs of bugs — they are the waste.
  • When will you fix the bug? Now or never! There is no later. Can you live with this bug forever? If not just fix it.
  • Don’t estimate the bugs. Use Planning Poker to estimate tickets, but not the bugs. Fixing bugs does not deliver value to the project. It is just fixing what the team did wrong in the past. Estimated bugs might disrupt your team velocity, creating an impression that team is delivering value.
  • Once you start, don’t stop. There might be a temptation to postpone bug fixing, cause there is this super important feature to finish or release is coming. Don’t do that. Once you stop, bugs will stuck up and easy beautiful mechanism will stop working.

Why it works

  • Visualization: If you have a lot of bugs everyone can see them. You know something is wrong and you should take a closer look at the project to fix it. Making it visible makes it hard to deny the problem.
  • It helps to build a quality culture in the team. In introducing Zero bug tolerance you say NO to bugs and low quality software.

Zero bugs, Happy people

  • The team is happy to work on a project where quality is ranks high.
  • Customers are happy to use a working software. They know that if a bug is found — it will be fixed right away.

As most Kanban techniques this one is simple. Yet you might be surprised how it can increase quality and speed of work of your team.

More ideas about Zero Bug Tolerance? Let me know it the comments below.