Posts Tagged ‘ZeroBugPolicy’
[DevoxxUK2025] Zero-Bug Policy Success: A Journey to Developer Happiness
At DevoxxUK2025, Peter Hilton, a product manager at a Norwegian startup, shared an inspiring experience report on achieving a zero-bug policy. Drawing from his team’s journey in 2024, Peter narrated how a small, remote team transformed their development process by tackling a backlog of bugs, ultimately reaching a state of zero open bugs. His talk explored the practical steps, team dynamics, and challenges of implementing this approach, emphasizing its impact on developer morale, customer trust, and software quality. Through a blend of storytelling and data, Peter illustrated how a disciplined focus on fixing bugs can lead to a more predictable and joyful development environment.
The Pain of Bugs and the Vision for Change
Peter began by highlighting the chaos caused by an ever-growing bug backlog, which drained time, eroded team morale, and undermined customer confidence. In early 2024, his team faced a surge in bug reports following a marketing campaign for their Norwegian web shop, a circular economy platform selling reusable soap containers. The influx revealed testing gaps and consumed developer time, hindering experiments to boost customer conversions. Inspired by a blog post he wrote in 2021 and the “fix it now or delete it” infographic by Yasaman Farzan, Peter proposed a zero-bug policy—not as a mandate for bug-free software but as a target to clear open issues. The team, motivated by shared frustration, agreed to experiment, envisioning predictable support efforts and meaningful feature feedback.
Overcoming Resistance and Defining the Approach
Convincing a team to prioritize bug fixes over new features required navigating skepticism and detailed “what-if” scenarios from developers. Peter described how initial discussions risked paralysis, as developers questioned edge cases like handling multiple simultaneous bugs. To move forward, the team framed the policy as a safe experiment, setting clear goals: reducing time spent on bug discussions, improving software reliability, and enabling meaningful customer feedback. By April 2024, they committed to fixing bugs exclusively for two months, a bold move that demanded collective focus. Peter, as product manager, leveraged his role to align stakeholders, emphasizing business outcomes like increased customer conversions over bug counts, which helped secure buy-in.
The Hard Work of Bug Fixing
The transition to a zero-bug state was arduous but structured. Starting in May 2024, the team of six developers tackled 252 bugs over the year, fixing around five per week, with peaks of 10–15 during intense periods. Peter shared a chart showing the number of open bugs fluctuating but never exceeding 15, a manageable load compared to teams with hundreds of unresolved issues. The team’s small size and autonomy, as a fully remote group, allowed them to focus without external dependencies. By August, they reached “zero bug day,” a milestone celebrated as a turning point. This period also saw improved testing practices, as each fix included robust test coverage to prevent regressions, addressing technical debt accumulated from the rushed initial launch.
Sustaining Zero Bugs and Reaping Rewards
Post-August, the team entered a maintenance phase, fixing bugs as they arose—typically one or two at a time—while spending half their time on new features. Peter noted that this phase, with months starting at zero open bugs (e.g., March–May 2025), felt liberating. Developers spent less time in meetings, and Peter could focus on customer growth experiments without bugs skewing results. A calendar visualization for April 2025 showed most days bug-free, with only two minor issues fixed leisurely. The simplicity of handling bugs case-by-case, without complex prioritization, mirrored the “fix it now or delete it” mantra, fostering a happier, more productive team environment.
Lessons for Other Teams
Reflecting on the journey, Peter emphasized that a zero-bug policy requires team-wide commitment and a tolerance for initial discomfort. While their small, autonomous team faced no external dependencies, larger organizations might need to address inter-team coordination or legacy backlogs. He suggested a radical option: deleting large backlogs to focus on new reports, though he hadn’t tried it. The key takeaway was the value of simplicity—handling one bug at a time eliminated the need for intricate rules. Peter also highlighted that the process built psychological safety, as tackling a tough challenge together strengthened team cohesion, making it a worthwhile experiment for teams seeking better quality and morale.