Zero bugs doesn’t mean you are lazy. It shows your guardrails worked.

Hi

I started my career in early 2000.

Executing test cases and reporting bugs. These were my tasks then.Only tasks.

That time it was a waterfall model.

So, I had sufficient time to test. Oh. No to execute test cases. I used to report bugs in ‘Lotus Notes’ (current generation of testers do not know it !)

Reporting was about numbers only.

Number of test cases executed each day. And the number of bugs reported each day. The report was extended to weekly and monthly time frames.

I once got an award for reporting the maximum number of bugs. Wow !!

I was happy to report bugs.

But I never thought of preventing bugs.

But,we can report zero bugs-by preventing them.

It is a great strategy. For sure.

The costly mistake: thinking “zero bugs” means no real work happened

You know, bug in a product is not a mistake.

Uncovering it late is a mistake. But unfortunately it is not recorded in the reports.

All reports, specifically bug reports just show the number of bugs uncovered while testing. 

But not the number of bugs prevented (even before testing is started).

Most preventive work never shows up in your defect tracker.

Now coming to fixing cost:

According to IBM System Science Institute Study, A defect caught in requirements costs 1×. The same defect found in production costs 30-100× more to fix (including resource time, patch, support).

And according to Capers Jones & Olivier Bonsignour, Economics of Software Quality, Median cost of a production defect is approximately $7,600.

While the median cost when removed in design is approximately $100. 

Whooping 75× difference !!

So, the take away from these and many other studies is worth noting : 

“Fixing a bug late always costs more than preventing it early”

And the sad part is, the expectations.

Expectations of the leaders/managers drive the processes. If the expectation is the count of defects reported, then, the same issue happens.

You saw what late bugs really cost you.

They cost you extra hours, lost focus and money- you never budgeted for.

So the question is obvious:

How do we keep those defects from ever appearing on the dashboard?

That is, how do you prevent those bugs ?

My answer is a simple three-step guardrail: 

Find the risk early, Fix it while it is cheap and make sure the team knows the win.

Let’s break that down.

But..wait a minute..

Prevention in practice:What you actually do

Bug prevention is not “a” task.

It is a set of steps or processes you follow. This can be plugged into your current test process.

What can you do?

You can develop some tiny habits. For example : 

Habit 1 : You can voluntarily ask to join a grooming session.

Better still, a design review session. Understand what is being developed. Ask the question-’What is the dumbest thing the user can do in this product”.

Habit 2 : Proactively ask to do code review. You can check for hard coded data, assumptions made, etc.

Now,you may ask - why these habits?

Treat each habit like a small experiment.

Make a note of the risk(s) you identified, the safeguard you applied and the potential impact you avoided. 

In the next three-four sprints,you will build a “defects prevented” list. That list costs almost nothing to maintain.

But proves why those guard-rails matter.

Do you remember,I mentioned about 3 guardrails earlier ?

I will give some more details now.

Use These Three guardrails: Find-Fix-Echo

I will give a brief explanation about this guardrail.

Find the risk

Risk is the possibility of facing a problem in the product or system.

Identifying the risk is important.

Where can you identify the risks?

You identify risks during: 1. Design reviews

2. Acceptance criteria in stories

3. User story refinement sessions 4. Pull request diffs

5. Scenario development brainstorming sessions

As you can see from the list, all of these are done even before your product reaches you for testing. Ask these questions yourself:

1. What can break?

2. How could users misuse this?

Once the risk is identified, do not wait.

Go head and report it. It can be your Jira,Excel or even a chat message. 

Let all stakeholders know the risks you have identified.

Fix it early

After reporting the risk, what is the next step?

Fix it !!

Your development partner will fix it.

You pair with the developer. Collaborate to do quick checks, testing-unit testing or verifying logs.

Do a session of exploratory testing.Make sure that the change breaks nothing.

Tell the team (Echo)

What have you done till now?

You prevented the bug !!

It may be the case of bug identification in the early stage too.

Nevertheless you saved the cost of fixing bug in the later stage.

Now it's the time to let the world know.

What you can do is: Share one-line summary in Slack or MS Teams or whatever collaboration tool you are using. Alternatively, you can explain in the sprint retrospective.

There are other formal ways of documenting which bugs you prevented. You can make a wiki-page in your organisation and document the details. You can attach the logs or screenshots as the evidence.

To get the visibility of leaders,you can make a 1 or 2 slider PPT and share.

What happens if you echo?

It has 2-fold advantages.

One - makes your invisible work of bug prevention visible to leaders and all others. Two - You help your team and other teams in setting the guardrails.

Your move - ask one preventive question in next review meeting

I hope you have learned something useful now.

You might be asking-how I can implement it in my project ?

I will give you some questions as examples. You can use them to discuss in your review or grooming meetings.

Question 1 : “What’s the worst input an user could enter here?”

→This question forces the team to think about special characters, long strings, emojis, and other edge cases in the flows.

Question 2 : “If this feature fails at 2 a.m., how will we know?” → The question forces your team to think about monitoring, alerting, and log-signal gaps early.

Question 3  : “Which assumption about user data might be wrong ?” The question opens up the discussion about optional fields, missing values, or unexpected locales.

Question 4 : “Where could a first-time user get stuck ?”  

This question brings usability and conversion risks into the conversation before code is merged.

Question 5 :  “If a malicious user tried to break this, what would they do first?”  

This simple question triggers basic security thinking without needing a full threat-modeling session.

Conclusion 

Bugs uncovered late in the development cycle are costly. They drain time, money and trust. Even when your defect chart looks impressive. Early guard-rails cost nothing and keep customers happy, but only if you:

1. Spot the risk early.

2. Fix it fast with the lightest safeguard that works.

3. Echo the win so the team and your manager know the value you added.

Do these three steps consistently and “zero bugs logged” will read like a success metric, not a red flag.

Action for this week

Pick one upcoming story or design meeting and ask a single preventive question. Log the risk, note the fix, and share a one-line summary in your team channel.

Thats all for now !!

-Jayateerth