5.4The Bug Report Title

The title is the most important line. In triage meetings, the team often sees only titles. A good title describes the bug, not the feature.

Title Formula

[What happens] when [condition/trigger]

Examples:

• "Login returns 500 when email contains '+' character"
• "Cart total shows $0.00 after applying 100% discount code"
• "Profile image upload silently fails for files larger than 5MB"
• "Search results page shows infinite spinner on empty query"

Anti-patterns:

• "Bug in login" (what bug?)
• "URGENT: production issue!!!" (urgency goes in priority field)
• "Test case TC-AUTH-007 failed" (what actually happened?)