March 2019
Archive

Beatnik, a bug reporting tool

A side project with two engineers. It's a tool for MyCujoo employees to report bugs, follow their status, and get each one to the team responsible for it.

Beatnik: a list of open issues, color-coded by area, next to the steps of the reporting flow.

Discipline: Side project
Company: MyCujoo
Year: 2019
Team: Me and 2 engineers

01
Problem

With over 100 people in five offices across time zones, bug reports flowed through two Slack channels with dozens of messages a day, plus Jira and Asana.

Issues outside their scope interrupted engineers, sometimes at night. Business developers didn't know who would fix a problem, or whether anyone would.

02
What I did

I talked to both sides, then we scoped an MVP with four parts. There is a color-coded list of reported issues, and a reporting flow that collects enough data to assign the right team and person. A severity estimate is based on that data, and each issue gets a Slack channel with the reporter and the people fixing it.

Sticky notes from interviews with frustrated quotes, next to paper sketches of the reporting flow. — What engineers and business developers told me.

The issue reporting flow: product area, feature, common problems, description, severity, contact details, and a Slack channel created. — Each step collects data to route the issue.

03
Impact

There are still bugs, but there is now one place and one process for reporting them, and the Slack channels have far fewer messages.

Wireframes of every step of the reporting flow. — The reporting flow, screen by screen.

04
Next steps

Reporter and resolver roles, status updates, and a check for similar reports before someone files a new one.