Dealing with tiny bugs in software seems trivial. The problem is that Developers don’t want to work on them and Customers and Managers don’t want to waste time on them. But, these tiny issues can really bring a product down.

Canonical, the company behind the Linux distribution Ubuntu, has coined the term “paper cut” for these issues and is starting a new initiative called “One Hundred Paper Cuts.” The idea is that they want to find 100 small bugs or issues that users have to deal with, and fix them. And they mean really small. For example, a bug that fits the qualifications for the initiative would be a button in the user interface that might be just a little too small. You may not notice that you have trouble clicking on those buttons, but it’s going to subtly impact your experience with the software. Imagine hundreds of these tiny issues scattered throughout the system. Now, the software feels broken.

It’s hard to justify fixing the smaller bugs, they take time and don’t seem to be valuable. Nobody seems to want to fix them because they don’t really affect getting new customers. But, they will affect keeping them around.

Keep in mind that one paper cut may be annoying, but one hundred is fatal.