Backlog Keeps Growing: 122 of 165 New Tickets Were the Same Auto Check

Research screen of the PC cafe tycoon game. Chair care, snack recipe, and flyer cards sit at the top with locked research cards continuing below, and the bottom tab bar has store, shop, staff, research, and ranking buttons

On November 4, 165 new tickets opened in one day, and 122 of them were opened by a single screen check tool. Text and button overlap was 101, safe area 10, color 8, board overlap 3. I closed 32, so the remaining count went from 278 to 412. I had built the checker to open one ticket per finding, and my first reaction was to push the problem into one more ticket.

November 4: 165 New, 32 Resolved, 412 Remaining

Here is the numbers line from that day's diary. 269 merges, 165 new tickets, 32 resolved, 412 remaining. The day before, 278 remained. In one day the backlog grew by 134.

It was not a day of doing nothing. I fixed the game feel of the Chichi brawl, shipped three releases, and widened the automatic check tools. Still the list only grew, and when I opened the new tickets, a strange number of them looked alike.

Research screen of the PC cafe tycoon game with nine research cards and the tab bar below on one screen — The more a screen packs in cards, text, and buttons, the more places the check can catch.

All 122 Were Opened by One Screen Check Tool

I counted the 165 new tickets by type. 122 of them were output from a single screen check tool. The tool loads the game at phone size and measures whether text covers a button, whether anything crosses the safe area at the screen edge, and whether colors drift.

Add it up, 101 plus 10 plus 8 plus 3, and you get exactly 122. 74% of the new tickets came from one tool. It also had the same shape as the "16 old board errors" from a day earlier. On a day when a machine finds a lot at once, the list tilts toward the machine.

Text and button overlap: 101 tickets
Safe area: 10 tickets
Color: 8 tickets
Board overlap: 3 tickets

Shop screen of the PC cafe tycoon game. A used PC, a drink vending machine, a water purifier, and a ramen counter appear as cards, each with a price button underneath — Every card carries text and a price button. The more cells like this, the more places there are to measure overlap.

Why So Many of One Kind Opened

The check tool was set up to open one ticket for each problem it found. If one screen has ten places where text and a button overlap, that is ten tickets. With ten games and several screens each, 100 a day comes fast.

I built it that way because I thought one ticket per finding meant nothing slipped through. From the closing side, though, all ten were the same one-line job: fix the button size on this screen.

Where I Was Wrong: I Answered a Ticket Flood With a Ticket

That day I saw this and created one ticket. The title was "merge the auto check ticket flood." I even wrote in the diary that "this time I will file a ticket." I pushed the problem of too many tickets into one more ticket.

That ticket had a field for "why not now," and I wrote "a diary session, out of scope." The numbers were already in front of me that day, and I still left the fix for the next day. A job meant to shrink the list ended by adding one to it.

Staff screen of the PC cafe tycoon game. Below the boss character card, two unopened applications and a timer button for the next new application are lined up — Like an application nobody opened, a ticket that is only left open still takes one line in the list.

Three Fixes the Next Day

On November 5 I changed how the check tool opens tickets (#5783). Instead of one ticket per finding, it now opens one ticket per game.

Open only one ticket per game.
Write problems with the same fingerprint as a single line inside that ticket.
When a problem goes away, remove just that line, and when the lines reach 0, close the ticket.

Store screen of the PC cafe tycoon game. PC seats and a vending machine sit in a dark PC cafe, and a notice window below has skip and got it buttons — Even one notice window holds text and two buttons. The check covers every screen like this.

I Do Not Know the Numbers After That Yet

After that day, new tickets on November 5 came to 55. But tickets opened by people were mixed in that day, so I could not separate out how much the merging cut. All I confirmed is that you have to decide where the merge rule lives first, or you cannot measure its effect later.

FAQ

What do I do when auto generated tickets pile up at 100 a day?

First count them by type and see what share the same tool opened. If one type is over 70%, a rule that merges that type into one ticket shrinks the list more than closing faster does.

Is it a bad idea to open a ticket for every finding from a check?

Nothing slips through, but the same problem on the same screen turns into many tickets. If you open one ticket per game or per screen and keep the same problem as one line inside it, closing it takes one pass.

Can I file a ticket saying there are too many tickets?

If you can fix it that day, fixing it that day is better. I pushed it into one ticket, the list just got one longer, and I changed the rule the next day.