Unfortunately, the user is sometimes the last thing on a developer’s mind. Equally unfortunately, the user should be the first thing on any developer’s mind. Code style, speedy delivery, and efficient architecture are all for naught when the first error is discovered.

What happened? What caused the error? Is the user to blame? Or, is it a legitimate bug? In most cases, the error displayed will end up being a stack trace. While this may be handy to a developer, it is useless and overwhelming to your average user.

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How did THAT happen?

Ever have this happen to you? You are about to go live with an awesome new web application when content simply disappears. A major piece of functionality just stopped working. The functionality that is working is behaving differently now on staging versus production. What happened? How can this be prevented?

Thankfully, most of the time, there is a common thread. Multiple developers. Yes, having multiple developers on any given project, when appropriately planned, can greatly reduce time to market. However, there ends up being an added overhead of communication. Let’s take a look at one way we can prevent this.

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