Confessions of a retired bug screener

My good friend Anika, the ant bear

In the context of this article, “bug screening” means taking a bug report filed by an employee or developer or someone else. Then, doing any number of things:

• Clean it up to make it more clear and understandable

• Figure out if it’s already a known issue

• Try to reproduce the problem

• Send the bug report back if more information is needed

• Route the bug to someone

• Set a priority and perhaps a milestone where the bug should be fixed

Most of my jobs at Apple involved screening bugs and in one 30 month period I screened over 45,000 bugs. Not surprisingly, it was 100% of my job. The reason this is important to mention (other than it gives me a lot of credibility) was that 15 years earlier, the bug flow was small enough that it was only a small fraction of my job.

These tips are a mashup of ideas to be used by bug filers, screeners, engineers, and management.

It’s never too early

Over the years, I saw many new, small teams being formed and I worked for a startup that was…