Bug tracking integration

[SETH]

I was wondering how people integrated any bug tracking software that
they use at work into their GTD system. Right now, I'm just starting
out and am using a paper based system.
I don't really relish the idea of writing out each issue in our bug
tracking program to putting it in my system and wanted to get people's
feedback on how they do this.

TIA,
SETH

[Andrew Garrett]

Your bug tracking system is just another collection point.

Anything which you find in there, you do it, delegate it, dump it or defer it.

If you're going to do it, just do it. No need to record anything.
(the "if it takes less than 2 minutes" rule).

If you're going to delegate it, then delegate it. Hopefully your bug
tracking system allows you to record who has been assigned a bug to
deal with it. At worst, if you have

If you're going to dump it, you frecord why in the tracking system, and dump it.

If you're going to defer it, you "claim" it in the bug tracking system
and either record an action to work on it in your seperate system, or
(as I prefer) leave it in the tracking system (details below).

From there, your personal preference comes into play.

Personally, I'd have a recurring action to "check assigned tasks in
bug tracking" or "check bug tracking". With this, your bug tracking
system becomes a seperate list - perhaps equivalent to @bugs or
something. Sure, it's in a different system, which is why I'd need a
reminder in my main system to check it.

Personally, I have three main collection systems.

My main one is in my Palm - stuff I enter at home or work goes in
there. My other two are gmail - mail gets tagged with @action or
@blog or @reply or whatever and archived - then when I'm sitting down
to write blog entries, those are there. When I'm looking for a next
action, mails I need to action are there. Mails I need to reply to
are right there. I also use del.icio.us for my bookmarking - and
again, I have tags like @blog, @action, @read, as well as subject
oriented tags. I don't use a bug tracking system right now (since I'm
not doing any dev work), but adding that into my workflow as I
describe above would be reasonably easy...

Hope that helps.

Andrew

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