How PMs should prioritise bugs?
Post the product goes LIVE, there will be bugs reported soon. The issues might range from network connectivity to server failure. The bugs will be of varied nature & will have different level of severity.
As a PM, you should analyse the impact on users, the effort to fix, how easy is it to reproduce the bugs, etc. in order to take a decision about the bug resolution. The process of prioritising which defects to resolve & how fast they can be resolved is known as “defect triage“ .
Here is the curated list of pointers which needs to be analysed in order to prioritise defects :-
- Negative impact on users ⬇️ : What’s the extent of negative impact on users? Is it a privacy or data threat issue ?
- Negative impact on the organization ⬇️: What’s the extent of negative impact on the org.? Will it garner negative PR and damage org prestige ?
- Negative impact on key metrics 📉 : Drop in NPS score ? Impact on AARRR metrics ? Increase in Contact Ratio ?
- No. of users impacted by defect 📈 : Is the no. of users impacted high? Are those transacting users/ new /repeat users ?
- Hot fix 🔥: Is there any feasibility of providing a quick and immediate fix based on the severity of the issue?
- Effort for bugfix 🪲: How much effort /days it will take to fix the bug ?
- Cost benefit analysis 💰 : Does the time/effort spent in fixing the bug overshoots the time spent to launch the new feature ? Will the revenue earned through new feature overshadow the bugfix effort cost?
PMs ability to understand each bug first, double check them & resolve them quickly is a very crucial skill to master. The strategy is to get your hands dirty, go in detail & as specific as possible and reproduce the issue, it will assist the developer to fix it asap.
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