Iāll save you from having to read the long background story, but Iām setting up a new bug repository in Jira for one of our company projects. They donāt really want to call it ābugsā, though. Iām trying to come up with something a little more neutral, and since itās in Jira, I canāt call it Issues. (Everything in Jira is an issue!) So far I have
Problems
Defects
Discrepancies
Obstacles
Anyone have any other suggestions? I feel Iām missing something obvious.
Thanks!
glitch
fault
probably you can go with ādefectā, this is quite a formal and well-known synonym for āsoftware bugā
āErrorā
Or if you really have the space, ādeviation from requirementā 
Mistake
Gap
ā¦ā¦ā¦ā¦ā¦ā¦ā¦ā¦ā¦.
Thing
Twiddle
Quirk
Phenomenon
Oddity
Behavior
Sparkle
Snowflake
HappyTree
More seriously, Iāve heard of this kind of dislike for ānegativeā terminology at companies before and it feels, to me, like trying to use different words may be masking a deeper problem with the teamās culture. If thereās a blame culture or an overly optimistic culture that doesnāt like admitting to mistakes, then whatever word you pick is going to develop the same negative connotation.
Something to watch for at least.
If I was told I could not use the word that should obviously be used, I would respond with suggestions designed to result in the foolās errand being given to someone else, such as:
Cock-ups
Sub-optimal behaviours
Badgers
Hexapod invertebrates
Stuff
Gremlins
Idiosyncracies
Imperfections
Peccadillos
Malefactions (or personfactions if your organisation insists on gender-free language)
Regardless of what ends up being used, this list of ideas makes me extremely happy.
Issue(s)? I used a custom system for bugs called āSoftware Issuesā.
When I find a potential issue/problem in the software I call it sometimes: observation
It can take the form of: some notes in the test report, a comment in Jira, a debrief with a dev/pm, a ticket with whatever type is closest to it, a subtask in an epic/task, a post-it, or a whiteboard scribble.
As I donāt initially know where it might fit in the grand scheme of things, or even if and how much it matters for who matters.
The PM/PO then finds a place for it, and a name in the backlog, or we find it together: feature, bug, regression, change, task, wonāt fix, tell the dev, low priority/delete.
hiccup
filler characters
Paula Vennels (former British Post office Boss) came up with
āexception or anomalyā. The Post Office then started to refer to known defects in the system as āexceptionsā.
Query or Opportunities (to improve)
i can think of these
Just from sheer curiosity, why do they not want to use the term ābugsā
If you read the other linked news snippets related to The Post Office Scandal, and read the book, you will know that someone took steps early-on to cover up how a high the number of ābugsā being reported by Fujitsu testers was. And so Iām sure (you have to watch the interviews too) that legal advice was to find a less emotive word. Users were saying the system had bugs, and lawyers suspected lawsuits with that word were coming. Lawyers knew that using a different word would break any correlations a Judge might make between the high reported defect rates often brought up as an evidence item in software trials and the common parlance term ābugā that 90% of adults use. We wonāt go into the horror of what happened to the testers.
Yeah, lets start calling them āunexpected featuresā instead 
To answer OPās post I use the word āglipā but its not that professional - āthere is a bit of a glip hereā or āwhen I do this, it starts glipping outā - more professionally Iāll use the word Observations, there can be negative and positive observations during a exploration test session, for example, or when Iām doing a writeup on a ticket Iāll note any observations down.
If there is a more blatant issue I will just use bug though. No point calling it anything else in my opinion, unless as you said people want to make things sound better than they are.
@conrad.braam great example, and exactly the kind of organizational dysfunction I was concerned about with my reply.
- why not