I’m a strong believer in “fix bugs first” - especially in the modern age of “always be deploying” web apps.

I was surprised that in our research for Kill the HiPPO - conducted via interviews with bootstrapped founders - the issue of dealing with bug fixes barely received a mention.

Are bug reports and feature requests essentially the same?

Adding features and fixing bugs fight for the same limited resources. Therefore, argue some people, they should therefore be prioritised in the same way.

I have strong opinions against this approach. My views here are shaped not only as a business owner but as a user of software. Like just about anyone these days, I use many software products every day, be they mobile apps, desktop apps, or web apps. And I encounter bugs in these apps every day. I've learnt to work around some of these bugs, and to avoid others. And some I just accept.

I don't think this is right. We shouldn't have to accept buggy software as the default.

I understand the business argument. Fixing bugs first is not necessarily the best approach from a business perspective.

But from the perspective of being proud of what we do, of making high quality software, and treating our customers well, "fixing bugs first" is a great approach.

In my own company, we’ll stop work on a new feature to fix a newly reported bug, even if it is a minor problem affecting just one person.

Bug or feature?

You can get into nitpicking arguments about when is something a bug report and when is it a feature request. If in doubt, I lean towards treating a customer's issue as a bug report.

The outcome of a "fix bugs first" policy

Once you have been following a “fix bugs first” approach for a while, the newly discovered bugs tend to be few, and straight forward to reproduce and fix.

Oh, and customers love it when the bug they reported is taken serious, dealt with urgently, and fixed within hours or days.