We’re such happy little vegemites to be able to work with such amazing customers from around the globe. We track bugs and collect client feedback from every continent except Antarctica (Looking at you Mcurdo Station!). It’s pretty cool!
We had a chat to James from Thoughtbubble in sunny London about how BugHerd has helped improve team communication and the development process.What made you adopt BugHerd?We came across BugHerd through our company PMs, who were tasked to find a new way of communicating across our growing workforce. We listed and tested quite a few different online tools and BugHerd stood out from the other online bug/feedback testing systems. So much so, that we adopted it immediately and turned off our own (home grown) system that we’d been using for over ten years!You mentioned that BugHerd has helped improve communication?We have three layers of development: our internal servers (on which we build), our DEV layer (staging for clients to view and feedback) and our LIVE servers (where we, erm, host our live sites, duh). Initially we set BugHerd on a couple of our internal servers, so the PMs could communicate with the design, production and development teams. Very rapidly we saw that this was cutting down our feedback cycle so rapidly that we rolled it out across the company.Next, we invited our clients as guests on the DEV platforms to start giving us feedback. Again we found that this reduced our feedback cycle so much we were finding ourselves beating key deadlines in our schedules!Our next step was to use BugHerd in conjunction with a wire-frame site (and linked JPGs) effectively taking a flat visual and allowing for mark-up on layout, navigation, feature expectations and even content.How does using BugHerd make your life easier?It’s made our Project Managers life so much easier; as instead of having to take screen grabs and mark them up, or write long emails or tasks that can (and have) been open to misunderstandings, we simply select, say and save. The fact that there’s also a screen grab (to refer back to), a way to discuss items, prioritise them and a log of actions are all gravy.Our clients are loving it too, as they also used to screen grab, or write up copious notes and then email them to the PMs, who would then have to extrapolate the details, bugs, requests and sort, list and relay them back to the teams. Seriously this aspect alone has saved us two thirds of the usual time involved in the process of feedback and bug testing.Any big projects that our app has been integral to?The London International Awards (LIAs) new website and this year’s entry systems have used BugHerd exclusively across the build and bug cycles.BugHerd was used on the development stage of The Gunn Report website has just been updated with the latest Showcase of the Year content and some new features.Cannes Lions are currently using it for this year’s Lions Festival.How can we improve?Sometimes we have between three and over ten testers from a client looking at a development site and we’ve found that bugs are duplicated a lot, so we’d suggest: Guest Teams - where guests can be grouped into a team (by the project owner) so they can see each other’s bugs. They would have a ‘view’ on the BugHerd website with two columns: Open and Closed (drag and drop between them), where they could search on tags.BugHerd note: This one is due to launch with our next update! Or course, we could simply give the client’s PM a normal Team member login, but then they would be privy to all our internal conversations, unless we simply had a internal/external toggle on comments – so that ‘internal’ teams members would see internal comments.BugHerd note: internal comments are comingThe ability to group teams into departments (design, development, sys admins, etc.) with team members assigned to these groups. Allocation of a task could be given to direct team members (as currently it can) or dropped into a ‘department’ where all team members can see it and/or allocate to individuals as per usual, or Department Head can allocate, etc.BugHerd note: We are kind of solving this with multiple boards (i.e. a marketing board, dev board, design board).... not planning on having "groups" as such at this stage.Overview - Somewhere where all outstanding tasks/bugs; can be viewed (most of our teams work on multiple projects at once and there’s no real way of seeing all their allocated outstanding bugs).BugHerd note: We're considering thisA way of flagging and/or highlighting inbound (waiting) feedback at a glance: again, as PMs we run various projects at once and it would be good to see (maybe as a flagged Project nav item – with a sup number eg: Project 1(12)) so we know where to ‘go’ first.BugHerd note: We're considering this too! Thanks for your great feedback!
“With BugHerd our feedback cycle time has been so significantly reduced we can’t imagine the process of feedback and bug testing without it.”
— James - Thoughtbubble
About Thoughtbubble
James from ThoughtbubbleThoughtbubble is a London (UK) based web agency, founded in 1997. Originally a full service agency they currently focus on web services to become the world’s leading online award entry system providers.Some of Thoughtbubble’s clients include, the Radio Academy Awards, the Hollywood Reporter Key Arts, Promax, Aperture Magazine Awards, the UK National Lottery Good Causes and the World Press Awards.However, their main client focus is on the world of Advertising to whom they offer a full service range, hosting them, designing and building their websites, and even their back office systems. Clients include, Cannes Lions, Eurobest, Dubai Lynx, Spikes Asia, the Clio Awards, London International Awards (LIA), the Golden Drum, the British Arrows, the Creative Circle, the ADC Young Guns, the Young Creative Network, the Global Effie’s, the IPAs, the Gunn Report and many others
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