> They often become out of sync with the state of the code I try to write a test when I open a ticket, demonstrating the desired behavior, and mark it such tha

> They often become out of sync with the state of the code I try to write a test when I open a ticket, demonstrating the desired behavior, and mark it such that it's checked for failure (so we notice if we've fixed it in passing) unless an environment variable is set to the particular ticket number. Sometimes I also include a test demonstrating current behavior - this helps surface the tickets if someone is working on something related.