Bug tracking software? Who needs it! I was confident in my ability to maintain several Outlook folders of bug reports, flagging completed ones 'orange' — or was it 'green' that meant done? No, wait, I think it was purple. My system was perfect. Then Alex came along and ruined it all. I can't pinpoint exactly when I started regularly using the bug tracking software that he liked, but it may've had something to do with being held at gunpoint. You probably thought Alex was kidding in that article. "You don't have a choice in this. Use the software," Alex suggested. After the threat encounter training session with Alex, I called my loved ones, then started copying the unresolved bugs (yellow flags) from my Outlook manual bug tracking system. Wait, crap, blue flags.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that change — such as introducing a bug tracking system — is gradual. Byron's team had reluctantly installed and began using Bugzilla, which ironically appeared to be full of bugs. His team would report updating and resolving issues, but these updates were not appearing in the system.

"I don't know what you're talking about, I definitely, absolutely updated it," a coworker insisted. "I have no idea why you're not seeing the updates. Are you sure you're looking in the right folder?"

Byron stifled a scoff, thinking Folder? Bugzilla doesn't sort issues by folders — it sorts by product, component, and other categories. Worse, the issue seemed to affect everyone but Byron. His issues would remain closed when he closed them, and issues he edited would always retain the updates. In fact, Byron had yet to see even a single error screen in Bugzilla.

Eventually, Byron asked his colleague to walk him through the process of updating an issue. "Great timing, I just did a checkin. Let's go." Let's go? Byron thought.

Byron's coworker led him to a storage room lined with file cabinets. After flipping through a few folders, he found what he was after and started writing on it.

While Bugzilla has a pretty impressive feature list, sadly "reading and scanning physical sheets of paper in a file cabinet to update issues" isn't one of them.