It’s not a bug, it’s a feature… no really
When a bug really is a feature
Bugs, put simply, are errors or defects in a software system. If you work in tech, you’ve probably heard someone say the half-joke, half-truth line “it’s not a bug, it’s a feature”. Often this is used in jest or to justify not wanting to fix a particularly difficult bug.
We have a bug in our backlog that we were recently debating whether or not to fix as part of another piece of work. I uttered a sentence that one of my team turned into an inspirational poster-esq image:
“If a software bug lives long enough in the system, it becomes a feature”
Some bugs are really obvious to users — for example, if I enter some information and it doesn’t save, this is clearly an error in the system that needs to be fixed. Others bugs are, to the user, just how the system works. Users don’t know what your internal requirements were and may not even know that something is considered by the company internally to be a ‘bug’ — they’ll just think it’s how the system works. Perhaps they’ll even like the functionality and find it suits their needs and…
