Prioritizing Bugs vs. Features in Development

Hot Take: Your Bug Priority System is Destroying Your Product (And Your Team)

I've watched teams implode over the "bugs vs features" debate.

Here's the uncomfortable truth about prioritization that no one wants to admit.

Your perfectly organized Jira board is killing your product's future.

🔑 Key Takeaways 🔑

• Ruthlessly prioritize based on user and business impact
• Batch your bug fixes instead of constant context-switching
• New features often beat minor bug fixes for business growth
• Perfect is the enemy of shipped
• Technical debt only matters when it slows down feature development
• Use The Reality Filter™: "Will users leave if we don't fix this?"

I used to be that engineer who tracked every minor bug like it was a personal vendetta.

Guess what happened?

Our competitors shipped game-changing features while we polished our error messages.

Stop. Seriously, just stop.

Here's what actually works in the real world:

Fire-level bugs get fixed immediately. Everything else goes through The Reality Filter™.

What's The Reality Filter™?

Simple: "Will users switch to our competitor if we don't fix this?"

That's it. That's the whole system.

Everything else is just corporate theatre.

But here's where it gets spicy:

Most teams have it completely backwards.

They fix 50 minor bugs instead of shipping one major feature.

Why?

Because bugs feel productive. They're easy wins. They look good in standups.

But they're fool's gold.

Here's my controversial-but-effective priority stack:

1. Bugs that cost money or customers (fix now)
2. Features that make money or win customers (build next)
3. Bugs that annoy but don't destroy (schedule later)
4. Everything else (probably never)

"But what about technical debt?"

Glad you asked.

Technical debt that slows down feature development jumps to #1.

Everything else can wait.

Want to know the secret weapon?

Batch your bugs.

Stop context-switching between features and fixes every hour.

Dedicate specific days to bug-crushing. Like going to the gym, consistency beats intensity.

Here's the truth about prioritization that will make your PM uncomfortable:

Perfect software doesn't exist.

Successful software does.

Choose wisely.

Your users don't care about your bug tracker.

They care about solving their problems.

And sometimes, a new feature solves more problems than fixing ten minor bugs.

I learned this after shipping products for a decade.

Now you know too.

Stop overthinking it.

Start shipping what matters.

Your team's sanity (and your product's future) depends on it.

Stop being the team that's "almost ready to ship."

Start being the team that ships.