Originally written in French. Translated by AI — the meaning has been preserved, not the prose.
Short definition
An organizational rule that forbids keeping a known defect without a decision: any qualified signal is either fixed or removed from defect management. It doesn't bear on the absence of defects.
Full definition
In ordinary usage, "zero bug" is understood as the promise of software without defects — a reading that makes the phrase unrealistic and gets the rule rejected before discussion.
In the articles on this blog, the phrase designates something else: zero known undecided defect. The perimeter is the known; the unknown stays out of reach. Qualifying a signal has only two outcomes: defect, which calls for a fix, and no defect, which removes the item from defect management. The excluded state is the third: the known defect kept in a queue for later.
The phrase comes from the English zero bug policy, documented notably by a Porsche account of the My Porsche application.
Usage in the field
Roadmap arbitration, upkeep of a tracking tool, prioritization committees, clearing an existing backlog, discussions about a team's velocity.
Synonyms and variants
zero bug policy · "zero known undecided defect".
Not to be confused with
- Defect — the qualified fact the rule makes the decision bear on, where the policy is the regime that forces the decision.
- Zero defect / total quality — a production objective aimed at not manufacturing defects, situated upstream of delivery.
- Bug backlog — a queue of known defects kept, prioritized and pushed back; that is the state the policy excludes.
- Technical debt — a design weakness whose handling has been decided; it is settled by a priority trade-off, outside this rule's perimeter.
Examples
A support report comes in: the team settles within the day between a fix and requalification as an improvement request. No third box is opened.
A team starting from a backlog defines a "temporary new zero": the rule applies fully only at the end of the phase.
Ambiguities / debates
The word spontaneously reads as a promise of perfection, and that gap is the first source of rejection.
A second wobble: does the rule bear only on open defects, or on all ticket management — in which case the separation between bug card and work card enters its perimeter.