Defect Management Process in Software

Testing (Bug Report Template)

What is Bug?
A bug is the consequence/outcome of a coding fault.

Defect in Software Testing

A Defect in Software Testing is a variation or deviation of the software application
from end user’s requirements or original business requirements. A software defect
is an error in coding which causes incorrect or unexpected results from a software
program which does not meet actual requirements. Testers might come across
such defects while executing the test cases.
These two terms have very thin line of difference, In the Industry both are faults
that need to be fixed and so interchangeably used by some of the Testing teams.

When testers execute the test cases, they might come across such test results
which are contradictory to expected results. This variation in test results is referred
to as a Software Defect. These defects or variations are referred by different names
in different organizations like issues, problems, bugs or incidents.

Bug Report in Software Testing

A Bug Report in Software Testing is a detailed document about bugs found in the
software application. Bug report contains each detail about bugs like description,
date when bug was found, name of tester who found it, name of developer who
fixed it, etc. Bug report helps to identify similar bugs in future so it can be avoided.
While reporting the bug to developer, your Bug Report should contain the
following information

 Defect_ID – Unique identification number for the defect.

 Defect Description – Detailed description of the Defect including
information about the module in which Defect was found.
 Version – Version of the application in which defect was found.
  Steps – Detailed steps along with screenshots with which the developer can
reproduce the defects.
 Date Raised – Date when the defect is raised
 Reference– where in you Provide reference to the documents like .
requirements, design, architecture or maybe even screenshots of the error to
help understand the defect
 Detected By – Name/ID of the tester who raised the defect
 Status – Status of the defect , more on this later
 Fixed by – Name/ID of the developer who fixed it
 Date Closed – Date when the defect is closed
 Severity which describes the impact of the defect on the application
 Priority which is related to defect fixing urgency. Severity Priority could be
High/Medium/Low based on the impact urgency at which the defect should
be fixed respectively

esources

Download a sample Defect Reporting Template

Consider the following as a Test Manager

Your team found bugs while testing the Guru99 Banking project.
After a week the developer responds –

In next week the tester responds

As in the above case, if the defect communication is done verbally, soon things
become very complicated. To control and effectively manage bugs you need a
defect lifecycle.
What is Defect Management Process?
Defect Management is a systematic process to identify and fix bugs. A defect
management cycle contains the following stages 1) Discovery of Defect, 2) Defect
Categorization 3) Fixing of Defect by developers 4) Verification by Testers, 5) Defect
Closure 6) Defect Reports at the end of project
This topic will guide you on how to apply the defect management process to the
project Guru99 Bank website. You can follow the below steps to manage defects.

Discovery
In the discovery phase, the project teams have to discover as many defects
as possible, before the end customer can discover it. A defect is said to be
discovered and change to status accepted when it is acknowledged and accepted
by the developers

In the above scenario, the testers discovered 84 defects in the website Guru99.
Let’s have a look at the following scenario; your testing team discovered some
issues in the Guru99 Bank website. They consider them as defects and reported to
the development team, but there is a conflict –

In such case, as a Test Manager, what will you do?

 A) Agree With the test team that its a defect

 B) Test Manager takes the role of judge to decide whether the problem is
defect or not

 C) Agree with the development team that is not a defect

In such case, a resolution process should be applied to solve the conflict, you take
the role as a judge to decide whether the website problem is a defect or not.
Categorization
Defect categorization help the software developers to prioritize their tasks. That
means that this kind of priority helps the developers in fixing those defects first
that are highly crucial.

Defects are usually categorized by the Test Manager –

Let’s do a small exercise as following

Drag & Drop the Defect Priority Below

 Critical
 High

 Medium
 Low
1) The website performance is too slow

2) The login function of the website does not work properly

3) The GUI of the website does not display correctly on Mobile devices

4) The website could not remember the user login session

5) Some links doesn’t work

Here are the recommended answers

No. Description Priority Explanation

The website performance is The performance bug can cause huge incon
1 High
too slow user.
The login function of the
Login is one of the main function of the ban
2 website does not work Critical
this feature does not work, it is serious bugs
properly
The GUI of the website
The defect affects the user who use Smartph
3 does not display correctly Medium
the website.
on mobile devices
The website could not
This is a serious issue since the user will be a
4 remember the user login High
but not be able to perform any further trans
session
This is an easy fix for development guys and
5 Some links doesn’t work Low
still access the site without these links

Defect Resolution
Defect Resolution in software testing is a step by step process of fixing the defects.
Defect resolution process starts with assigning defects to developers, then
developers schedule the defect to be fixed as per priority, then defects are fixed
and finally developers send a report of resolution to the test manager. This process
helps to fix and track defects easily.
You can follow the following steps to fix the defect.
  Assignment: Assigned to a developer or other technician to fix, and changed
the status to Responding.
 Schedule fixing: The developer side take charge in this phase. They will
create a schedule to fix these defects, depend on the defect priority.
 Fix the defect: While the development team is fixing the defects, the Test
Manager tracks the process of fixing defect compare to the above schedule.
 Report the resolution: Get a report of the resolution from developers when
defects are fixed.

Verification
After the development team fixed and reported the defect, the testing
team verifies that the defects are actually resolved.

For example, in the above scenario, when the development team reported that
they already fixed 61 defects, your team would test again to verify these defects
were actually fixed or not.
Closure
Once a defect has been resolved and verified, the defect is changed status
as closed. If not, you have send a notice to the development to check the defect
again.

Defect Reporting
Defect Reporting in software testing is a process in which test managers prepare
and send the defect report to the management team for feedback on defect
management process and defects’ status. Then the management team checks the
defect report and sends feedback or provides further support if needed. Defect
reporting helps to better communicate, track and explain defects in detail.
The management board has right to know the defect status. They must understand
the defect management process to support you in this project. Therefore, you must
report them the current defect situation to get feedback from them.

Important Defect Metrics

Back the above scenario. The developer and test teams have reviews the defects
reported. Here is the result of that discussion
How to measure and evaluate the quality of the test execution?

This is a question which every Test Manager wants to know. There are 2 parameters
which you can consider as following
In the above scenario, you can calculate the defection rejection ratio (DRR)
is 20/84 = 0.238 (23.8 %).

Another example, supposed the Guru99 Bank website has total 64 defects, but your
testing team only detect 44 defects i.e. they missed 20 defects. Therefore, you can
calculate the defect leakage ratio (DLR) is 20/64 = 0.312 (31.2 %).

Conclusion, the quality of test execution is evaluated via following two parameters

The smaller value of DRR and DLR is, the better quality of test execution is. What is
the ratio range which is acceptable? This range could be defined and accepted
base in the project target or you may refer the metrics of similar projects.

In this project, the recommended value of acceptable ratio is 5 ~ 10%. It means the
quality of test execution is low. You should find countermeasure to reduce these
ratios such as

 Improve the testing skills of member.

 Spend more time for testing execution, especially for reviewing the test
execution results.