Ever felt overwhelmed by the endless cycle of bug management? At the startup Choco, we spend countless hours of triaging, assigning, and back-and-forth communicating about bugs, only to discover that half of them don’t even need a fix. Apart from these efforts, the daily bug duty responsibility added up to over 7 hours per month; a significant burden for any startup. How can we automate bug assignment and streamline the bug management process?

Enter ‘La Cucaracha’, born from a hackathon, based on a Mexican folk song and powered by AI technology. It automatically assigns each bug to the best suitable team by intelligently analysing the bug’s details and team responsibilities. But we didn’t stop there. A second hackathon resulted in a system that automatically creates bug reports from various sources, cleverly filtering out the unnecessary ones. These innovations have transformed our approach to bug management.

These hackathons were not just competitions; they were incubators for innovation. Diverse skill sets were combined, from engineering to operations, to brainstorm and whiteboard potential AI solutions. I will share this journey from idea to reality, highlighting the mix of tools and platforms that made it possible, including GPT API, Databricks, Zapier, and GitHub CoPilot, integrated with Slack and JIRA.

Join this talk to uncover how these experiences with AI hackathons can inspire your own journey towards more innovative, efficient bug management and other traditional processes. Discover the potential of AI to not just automate but elevate your workflows, fostering a culture of creativity and effectiveness in the face of software challenges.

Anaïs van Asselt

Choco, Germany

Anaïs is a test automation engineer, coach, and enthusiast. Over 9 years, she gained a lot of perspective at a variety of organisations, and (test automation) tooling, both frontend and backend. In pursuit of sustainable test automation, she applies a context-driven approach, Bruce Lee Driven Development, and joins forces with developers. Last year she started her mission at Choco in Berlin to build a sustainable supply chain, and reduce food waste worldwide. Challenge accepted!