It’s not a bug, it’s a feature

As you may know, my background started in Quality Assurance (QA). It was my starting point, and let me tell you it was a point that I continue to use today. There is something about looking to make sure that all the details are there, everything is clear and you do everything that you can when trying to do anything (and I mean not only in software, but in life). QA is in my blood, it will always be in my blood. I test things all the time, games, software, machines, anything that I have in front of me, I try to test it.

When I mean I test it, I’m not the standard user. On the first day of training for QA, we were told, do what the software expects, do what it doesn’t expect, and do what you think will break it. All three of those I find myself doing every single day. A new website that I visit, I need to test it out.

Things have changed with technology as you know, and how software is created now (from 25 years ago). I recall when we would print out all the bug reports and we would sit around and go through each bug one by one, confirming if it still happened or if it was fixed. I remember there was one time we were on the phone with a team of developers reviewing the current list of bugs, when there was some discussion about. I don’t recall the exact issue off the top of my head, but it was mentioned that it wasn’t a bug but a feature of the game. We all looked at each other kind of in shock, but then we understood what they were saying.

“It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.” They designed something new, and they didn’t tell the QA team behind it, and when we started to look at the overall thing, we found issue after issue. These were not issues, but features. So when you are designing your game, your product, think of bugs as features. Does it crash your system? That’s the built in timeout feature. Have a crazy sound that randomly plays? That’s the alarm feature.

Maybe it is a different mindset, or not. But with QA, these are the things that we look for, that we continue to look for and things that make an impact on our lives. We remember the good bugs, we remember the bad ones, and we can’t wait to find new ones. It’s what we do, it’s in our DNA. So remember your code is perfect, and there are no bugs, it just has an unlimited amount of features included.

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