#1 most frequent
United States of America
41.7%1,264 installations of 3,034
What is Bugzilla?
Categories & Use Cases
Videos
Who Buys & Uses Bugzilla
#2 most frequent
India
26.7%810 installations of 3,034
#3 most frequent
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
4.7%144 installations of 3,034
Bugzilla, or nah?
Pros
- Project synchronization. Used as the primary resource for bug tracking, bugzilla can serve as a powerful project synchronization tool. Every aspect of the tickets can be tracked; status changes, comments, added watchers, who's currently working on the issue, and if it's related to another issue.
- Unlimited Space. I currently work with a company who services hundreds of clients - and bugzilla helped us manage each one.
- For companies with a need to service many different projects, or iterations of the same project, bugzilla handles this task exceptionally well.
- Workflow assignments. Workflow is customizable by the simply selection of a checkbox. If ever the workflow needs to be altered, doing so is as simple as a .2 second "click".
Cons
- Cloud Based. I'd like to see bugzilla be cloud based. The company I currently work with made a final decision to change db's for this specific reason. Due to the frequency of travel in this company, they need access to bugzilla from differing national / international locations.
- Larger File Attachments. I believe the limit of a bugzilla content upload is 4 megabytes. For many of our video'd issues, this file size is simply impractical without the additional effort exertion on video compressor applications.
Return on Investment
- Truly serves its purpose for local bug tracking.
- Ability to trace conversations with time stamps relinquishes the common burden of tracking release fixes.
Alternatives Considered
Eclipse Luna, JIRA Software and Selenium
Other Software Used
JIRA Software, Eclipse Luna, Selenium
Bugzilla - Maintaining Workflow
Pros
- It is organized.
- It is a clean interface.
- It is easy to get started with.
Cons
- Could be more customizable.
- Have easier coordination between users.
- More user accessibility features.
Return on Investment
- Useful
- Clean
- More than necessary at times
Other Software Used
FileMaker Pro, Dropbox, Alexa
Bugzilla for Bug Hunters
Pros
- Open source tool. No license required. Easy to install and use for new users.
- Great tool for defect tracking and managing defects. Well organized and very user friendly.
- Well manageable and reports of defect are exportable.
- Great for managing multi-project level defect tracking.
Cons
- Improvement required for reporting and filtering area.
- Improvement required in customizing dashboard according to users preference.
- Improvement required for project level documentations.
Return on Investment
- Bugzilla was helpful for defect tracking and managing the entire the project and organization.
- Bugzilla was not helpful for more advanced features like linking defects when a specific requirement fails to complete.
Other Software Used
JIRA Software, TeamCity, HP UFT, Selenium
Bugzilla may not be Godzilla of bug tracking tools, but comes very close.
Pros
- Open source! No license fee involved, no limit to the number of licenses.
- Easy to install and maintain. Installation is very easy and hardly needs any maintenance efforts, except when migrating from one version to other. Each project can have its own group of users.
- Includes all the core features/fields that are needed to log a software bug/issue.
- Multiple attachments are possible, supports various formats.
- Good for reporting. Filtering mechanism lets you query bugs by various parameters.
Cons
- Dashboard - If a landing page with a graphical display was available for use by management, that would help a lot.
- Customizing - Need more flexibility with customizing fields (renaming, adding etc).
- Workflow - If we could have templates that could be followed by various projects (which is how organizations work), that would encourage more project teams to adopt usage of Bugzilla.
- Add/Filter Enhancements or Requirements - Often times an enhancement is logged that is not a bug, but this cannot be distinguished easily. Provide option to log not just a bug, but also Enhancements or Requirements.
Return on Investment
- It has made the SDLC process more efficient. Bugs were logged and tracked in emails or in Excel sheets leading to slow communication and at time version issues with multiple files. Being an online tool, Bugzilla solved those issues, improved communication, instant status updates and improved efficiency.
- We have used Bugzilla with a lot of federal goverment agencies (DHS, CMS, SAMHSA, CDC, HHS etc). Project Directors adn Principle Investigators were at times given access to Bugzilla which provided a snapshot of open vs closed issues.
- Some groups would resist using Bugzilla with the email reminders being the main reason. Turning off or reminding them of features where we can 'control' email notification helped a lot.
Other Software Used
Visual Studio.NET, Microsoft SQL Server, Selenium, SurveyGizmo
Bugzilla review from a Global eCommerce team
Pros
- Software Workflow. Bugzilla has some lightweight workflow that allows you to follow a specific. In lieu of using nothing, it provides some structure.
- Project Management. Bugzilla allows PMs to organize what needs to be done and when.
- Metrics of software team effectiveness. The reporting, while not robust, does allow for burn down charts on other measures of effectiveness. For example, if you want to know the number of reopens, Bugzilla can do that. While not the most telling, it can help give you an idea.
Cons
- User interface is terrible. It was built in the 90s and still looks like it. While the back-end is robust, the front-end is antiquated. It provides too many options and is easy to break.
- Reporting is weak. It provides some basic statistics but doesn't provide details. You can find out how many reopens there are, but you can't know how quickly things go from reopen to complete.
- Doesn't have the best "canned" workflows. Software is done by teams. Bugzilla doesn't "out of the box" have workflows that mimic what a typical software organization does.
Return on Investment
- Makes the team more effecient
- Increases visibility to the organization of what's going on.
