Bugs & issues

It is critical that we have a shared understanding of when a system is working ‘as intended’ or when it is deviating from this.

This short doc explains what this means in practice.

We would suggest that around 80% of all bug reports we get are caused by ‘wonky data’ meaning where the data in System1 (say a CRM) does not match the data in System2 (ERP), causing any kind of matching logic bridging these – to fail.

🖊️ Example

So let’s say we build an automation that is designed to find a customer in the ERP by using the email address in the CRM.

If the client’s email domain was updated, and this change only made it as far as your CRM system (and not your ERP), when the automation performs a ‘find or create’ action in the ERP, it will create a duplicate customer:

System1

CRM:

john.smith@shop.com⁠

⁠

System2

ERP:

john.smith@shopltd.co.uk⁠

The system would have worked EXACTLY as it was intended to work.

So the creation of this duplicate customer IS NOT A BUG, but just a natural and logical execution of the workflow.

📘 Definition of a bug

We define a bug as any issue that meets the following criteria:

Where a system’s output deviates from the developer’s intentions

The developers intended system design did not fulfil a common or reasonable user expectation.

Genuine mistake by one of our team members within your applications and systems.

🚫 These are not bugs

Upstream or downstream third-party app failures (e.g. the CRM fails to fire a webhook reliably) due to internal error or configuration changes (accidental or deliberate) by a third-party which break a dependency that your system relied on.

An output that does not comply with unexpressed client requirements (i.e. we weren’t told it should do X)

A system that operates as expected, but did not include certain business logic (decisions, variables, organisational data lookups)

Changes to scope, even if the client didn’t know what they wanted until they saw something developed.

All third-party permissions and connectivity issues

Any issue caused by data errors or data-mismatch between multiple apps across your system - Garbage In Garbage Out

Want to print your doc?
This is not the way.

Try clicking the ⋯ next to your doc name or using a keyboard shortcut (

CtrlP

) instead.