Got Bugs?
Three system-level strategies to strengthen software delivery
Frequent bugs are rarely just a code problem. Quality of code, testing practices, legacy complexity, and unclear requirements all contribute - but they’re not the whole story. In most cases, the delivery system itself makes bugs inevitable.
This article outlines three system-level strategies that reduce the impact of bugs while protecting teams from burnout.
1. Monitoring and Observability - See Failures First
You can’t stop every bug hitting production - but you can choose whether customers find it, or you do.
Every system fails. The difference is whether your customers find the issue before you do.
- Monitoring tells you when something’s wrong - outages, error spikes, slowdowns.
- Observability lets you see why it’s wrong - surfacing root causes and cutting recovery time.
Key principle: Change failure rate matters, but recovery time matters just as much.
A well-instrumented system allows teams to:
- Identify leading indicators before outages occur
- Detect and investigate degradations quickly
- Expose side effects of changes early
- Track long-term reliability trends
Without this visibility, teams are left firefighting blind.
2. Streamline Change Approval - Safety Without the Drag
Adding more gates doesn’t make delivery safer - it just makes recovery more complicated.
When bugs cause pain, the instinct is often to add more approvals, reviews, and controls. Paradoxically, this increases risk.
- Heavy CABs and sign-offs delay releases.
- Delayed releases increase batch size.
- Larger batches amplify risk and failure impact.
The safer path is to make changes smaller, faster, and reversible.
Practical approaches include:
- Peer review supported by automated tests
- Security checks embedded in the toolchain
- Automated detection of regressions and performance issues
- Risk-based flags to trigger extra review when warranted
Key principle: Adding friction doesn’t make delivery safer. It makes recovery more complicated.
3. Automation and Testing - Shrink the Feedback Loop
Fast, automated feedback shrinks the gap between cause and effect - and that’s what turns firefighting into flow.
Manual deployments and unreliable tests create a delay. Delay drives up batch size. Bigger batches hide bugs and make root causes harder to find.
Automation is not about speed for its own sake. It is about fast, reliable feedback - knowing within minutes whether a change is safe.
Foundations for quality include:
- Continuous testing throughout the delivery lifecycle
- Suites of fast, reliable automated tests
- Integration of these tests into continuous delivery pipelines
Key principle: Automation does not eliminate bugs. But it shrinks the gap between cause and effect, turning firefighting into a controlled, recoverable flow.
Conclusion - Bugs Are Inevitable, Burnout Isn’t
Bugs are inevitable. Burnout isn’t.
Monitoring and observability, streamlined approvals, and deployment automation are not silver bullets. But combined, they give teams the visibility, discipline, and feedback loops needed to reduce firefighting, restore flow, and sustain delivery performance.