Bugs piled up, but no one knew which were critical or which could wait.
What happened next flipped how the team approached every defect.
She hadn’t expected to think about work that day. It was a regular hospital visit, a follow-up after her brother’s minor surgery. Nothing critical. No panic. Just time in the waiting area and quiet glances at the reception clock. But what caught her attention wasn’t the doctor. It was a passing conversation with a nurse at the triage station.
She tapped the edge of the plastic clipboard on her lap. “First thing we do? Tag everyone. Red if they need us now. Yellow if they can wait a bit. Green if they’re stable enough to hold on. But before that, we always get the basics, vitals like BP, heart rate, oxygen levels, all logged in here,” she said, pointing to a screen behind the desk.
The Project Manager leaned in, genuinely curious. “And after the vitals? How do you know what to check next?”
The nurse nodded. “Then we do a quick physical exam. If it’s an orthopedic issue, we check for fractures or dislocations before sending them for an X-ray. If it’s chest pain, we run an ECG right away. It’s the only reason this place doesn’t fall apart when five emergencies show up at once.” The nurse moved on, but the thought lingered. That evening, sitting at her desk back at WonderBiz, the memory kept looping in her mind. Her team had just finished yet another triage call with the customer team. The same issue, again. A list of bugs. A long pause. No decisions. Everyone waiting for clarity that never came.
The customer team would bring up defects but without enough detail. Was it urgent? Was it breaking something core? Did it affect a recent release or an older module? No one was sure. The WonderBiz team didn’t feel confident speaking up because, truthfully, they didn’t have the full picture. And while the debate dragged on, the real impact was being felt by the customer’s customer, a plant operator halfway across the world, waiting for sensor stability or report accuracy. She realized the root of the issue wasn’t a lack of intent, it was the absence of structure. Everyone wanted to make triage work, but no one had set up a triage system that made it easier to take decisions.
Then came the handholding. She didn’t expect the customer team to just know how to analyze regression risk or design dependencies. So she sat with them, one session at a time, and helped them break it down. Had this happened before? Could it impact other modules? Was it isolated or spreading? It was slow at first, but it got easier with every release. Finally, she introduced a Non-Functional Requirements impact checklist. Because sometimes the loudest issues weren’t the most dangerous ones. A seemingly minor defect in one release had quietly slowed down telemetry in the background until the plant operator escalated. That checklist now ensured nothing got missed, from performance to reliability to uptime.
Three weeks later, the difference was visible. The WonderBiz team was contributing actively during triage, speaking with confidence, and flagging risks early. The customer team had become sharper in the way they raised defects, now thinking about consequences instead of just symptoms. And most importantly, their customer’s customer had stopped sending last-minute escalations. The team saved nearly 5% effort each release not by working harder, but by working with clarity.
5%
It wasn’t about who owned triage. It was about enabling everyone to participate in it. And sometimes, all it takes is one nurse in a waiting room to make you realize what’s missing.
Key Takeaway
Taking defect triage seriously clarifying bug details, handholding impact analysis,
and using an NFR checklist enabled the team to act confidently and prevent rework.
