In most dev teams, a bug- or issuetracking tool is used to keep track of progress. If you use a more advanced tool, you can also track of the dev process. This is all very fine, but in my experience more attention should be given to the flow of issues through the process.
Consider this: a dev or QA observes an issue. It is a blocking issue, so immediate attention is given to it and the issue is solved. However, what happens to all non-blocking issues? They stay on someone’s ’fix list’, until the issue become blocking. Then immediate attention has to be given to it and the issue is solved. What happen to all other issues. They stay on someone’s fix list. See a pattern here?
What this needs is triage. In essence this means that someone is responsible for the flow of the issues in order to lessens the time needed from ’inbox’ to ’fixed’. One way to do this is to assign new issues to the person who does triage. He then assigns the issues to the person who will solve this, most preferably with a deadline. He will also monitor whether: issues stay open for too long or issues or still assigned to people who are no longer on the dev team.
I have seen this work, mainly because responsibilities are clear about who does what and when. In an agile environment the flow of issues and not losing sight of them is paramount to the success of the team.