Bug Fix Cycle

Bug reports are handled a bit differently than projects because of their urgency of affecting the primary goals of an application. The following process is used whenever a bug is submitted into our system.

Step 1: Get Bug Report

Bugs are submitted by going to github.ncsu.edu and submitting an issue for the project in question. Important information is gathered from the client regarding the scope and impact of the bug on the goals of the application.

Step 2: Evaluate Severity

Whenever a bug is submitted in the system, the design and development team evaluate the severity of the bug to determine if it is a critical bug. Any security issues found are automatically considered critical and are addressed immediately. Critical bugs and security issues continue to Step 4, all others go to Step 3.

Step 3: Prioritization Meeting

Non-critical bugs are addressed on a monthly basis at our prioritization meetings. Each bug is evaulated based on the Priority Guidelines and are scheduled to be fixed accordingly. When the bug has been scheduled to be addressed, it continues to Step 4.

Step 4: Coding

This is where the magic happens

Step 5: Code Review

One of the most important and beneficial processes an application development team can go through is code reviews. Code reviews not only help developers find bugs within the software, but they ensure the overall style and design decisions stay consistent. Code reviews are done whenever a feature is added to the code base, before a commit is done.

Step 6: Commit

GitHub is currently used for version control. Commits are made whenever features are added to the codebase. Once a commit is made, the process is repeated by coding, code review, and commit. This is done when the bug has been addressed and tested.

Step 7: Release

Once the bug has been fixed and tested, the revision is tagged and the codebase is exported to wherever the application will run from and the bug is closed.