How I Handled a Bug in Production: A Behind-the-Scenes QA Walkthrough.
Overview
This is a honest breakdown of how I personally approach production bugs — what I do, what I've learned, and what I try to improve each time.
What to Verify
When I face a production bug, the first things I confirm:
- The bug is real and reproducible not an unconfirmed report.
- Impact context: which users are affected, what device, what time, and how widespread it is.
- Severity: does it break core functionality or affect many users (critical, act now), or is it a minor edge case (can wait for the next deployment)?
How to Verify
The flow I follow:
- Confirm first. Reproduce the bug consistently, check the browser console and server logs, and gather basic context before calling it confirmed.
- Assess the impact. Determine severity to decide urgency.
- Communicate early. As soon as it is confirmed, share what is broken, who is affected, and what I am doing, so the team can prepare a workaround.
- Find the root cause. Trace through the network tab and console (requests, responses, unexpected status or payload); involve a developer for server logs when needed.
- Write a short post-mortem. Record what happened, the root cause, and why it slipped past our tests, so the same bug does not recur.