---
Title: "What Is Bug Tracking? Process and Tools"
Url: "https://computer.io/glossary/bug-tracking"
Topic: "Product and engineering"
Description: "Bug tracking is the process of logging, prioritizing, assigning and fixing software defects. The bug lifecycle, key fields and linking bugs to support."
---

# What is bug tracking?

Bug tracking is the process of recording software defects, then prioritizing, assigning, fixing and verifying them, usually in a tracking tool that keeps the full history of each bug and links it to related code, releases and customer reports.

## Bug lifecycle

New → triaged → in progress → in review → fixed → verified → closed.

## Key fields

| Field | Example |
| --- | --- |
| Title | "Export fails over 10K rows" |
| Steps to reproduce | 1, 2, 3 |
| Severity | High |
| Affected customers | 12 accounts |
| Owner | Data team |

## Linking bugs to customers

When support tickets link to bugs, teams see customer impact and can notify customers when fixes ship.

## FAQ

### What is the difference between bug tracking and issue tracking?

Issue tracking covers all work items; bug tracking focuses on defects.

### How do you prioritize bugs?

By severity, customer impact, frequency and effort.

### What makes a good bug report?

Clear steps, expected vs actual behavior, environment and screenshots.

## Related terms

- [Issue tracking](https://computer.io/glossary/issue-tracking)
- [Product backlog](https://computer.io/glossary/product-backlog)
- [How do you connect customer support tickets to engineering issues?](https://computer.io/answers/how-to-connect-support-tickets-to-engineering-issues)

## How Computer helps

- [Meet computer](https://devrev.ai/meet-computer)

## Further reading

- [Bug tracking issue management](https://devrev.ai/blog/bug-tracking-issue-management)