Some people believe that software development is merely child’s play.
Let us show you the reality.
In the software development real-world, a pool of software defects is looking forward towards the hands and brains of manual testers to detect, report, and fix them. Real-world is problematic and troublesome for techies because the quality is a top-notch success factor for software products – as end-users’ expectations and requirements are continuously changing. Bugs and defects do not show up abruptly in the later stages of a software product. However, these flaws then appear as a major threat actor for both the software product and the organization. This process of hunting, reporting, and fixing errors or defects is way more time and effort consuming. That’s when defect management tools come up as a life savior for organizations and testers. The use of appropriate defect management software and issue tracking tools will protect the defects from escaping into production and then the real nightmares for techies start as it will adversely impact the user experience.
Fundamentals of Defect Management Process
Below are some of the fundamentals of the defect management process.
Detection of Defects – Bugs or defects that are hard to detect are often the underlying factors behind the failure of a product. Identifying each defect, even the hidden ones, is one of the most challenging tasks of the defect management process yet it’s not something impossible. Testing a particular software product in real-world conditions can make sure the maximum bug/defect detection. The job of a manual tester doesn’t end with identifying the bugs. It’s important to track its status, for example, whether it’s resolved or taken into development, or if it is duplicated by some other bug, and a lot more. This can be done using defect tracking software. To streamline all these testing phases, testers often resort to the robust and effective bug tracking tool or system. Moreover, to identify and segregate defects as per their nature, it is significant to have a one-stop solution and a sole accessible system that all testers can have at hand, to be on the same page. Hence, when choosing among defect management tools, organizations must look for these features in particular.
Classification of Defects – After hunting and spotting defects in the software products, now comes the responsibility of testers to check whether they have collected appropriate or sufficient defect data or not. Good or bad quality of data collected is important because it helps manual testers to fix the defects in a limited amount of time. Here testers need to beware of not capturing too much defect data as they don’t have enough time to sort out which things to get started on.
A few concerns for manual testers when it comes to capturing appropriate defect data are as follows: description of each defect, level of defect severity, cost of fixtures of bugs, feature in which defect was identified, name of the tester who identified the defect, nature of the defect spotted, revision and release deadlines etc.
One of the above-mentioned criteria of defect data collection and fixture that is of great importance is none other than the level of defect severity. Bugs or defects as per their level of intensity or seriousness can be classified as follows.
- Low: Defects of such severity levels are not that harmful and are not capable of failing software products and apps.
- Minor: Defects of such intensity might come up with some unexpected or undesired behavior, yet are not capable of disrupting the functionality of a software product.
- Major: Such types of defects can easily destroy important parts of the system.
- Critical: These types of software defects can completely shut down the system.
Rectification of errors – Moving on in the defect management process, the next step in the queue is to rectify errors after the defects are being identified and proper information about them is collected, by the testers. Now rectification starts with the allotments of different types of bugs or defects hunted to the development team for proper bug fixtures. Then the reports on the status of bug fixtures are provided to the project managers and then these managers are responsible for updating the status of identified bugs/defects as fixed or resolved.
Analyzing the overall defect process – An overall analysis of a defect management process is substantial for the continuous growth of organizations and their products because it helps in preventing similar defects from rising again in subsequent projects. Collect key error data and corresponding corrective measures, and share the experience with relevant teams. This practice is great at guiding future development practices, to avoid defects or help improve solutions so that errors can be fixed more quickly. This analysis can be carried out by the test managers or the testers and developers who fixed the previous defects themselves or by having peer reviews for better and critical evaluation.
Wrapping Up…
Defect Management process must be at the core of every software development firm. Because defects are the pain points that can be easily exploited by threat actors, fixing these errors needs to be done carefully. Manual testers alone in hunting and fixing bugs are not enough in this regard; there must be use of special defect management tools and systems, accessible to all the team members, for avoiding any discrepancy later in the future. Moreover, the assistance of these tools can make the tasks of manual testers easier and more simplified as well. Otherwise, it is difficult to fix defects effectively.
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