Bug, Bug Template & Bug Life Cycle

Bug is basically defined as the common term used to describe an error, flaw, mistake, failure, or fault in a computer program or system that produces an incorrect or unexpected result, or causes it to behave in unintended ways. Most bugs arise from mistakes and errors made by people in either a program'ssource code or its design, and a few are caused by compilers producing incorrect code. A program that contains a large number of bugs, and/or bugs that seriously interfere with its functionality, is said to be buggy. Reports detailing bugs in a program are commonly known as bug reports, fault reports, problem reports, trouble reports, change requests, and so forth.

Bug Template :

If you are using any Software Testing Management tool or any Bug reporting tool like Bugzilla or Test Director or Bughost or any other online bug tracking tool, then; the tool will automatically generate the bug report. If you are not using any tool, you may refer to the following template for your software bug report:

·                 Name of Reporter:

·                 Email Id of Reporter:

·                 Version or Build: <Version or Build of the product>

·                 Module or component: <mention here the name of tested module or component>

·                 Platform / Operating System:

·                 Type of error: <coding error / design error / suggestion / UI / documentation / text error / hardware error >

·                 Priority:

·                 Severity:

·                 Status:

·                 Assigned to:

·                 Summary:

·                 Description: <mention here the steps to reproduce, expected result and actual result>

Bug Report

After you complete your Software Testing, it is good practice to prepare an effective bug report. Fixing a bug depends on how effectively you report it. Below are some tips to write a good software bug report:

·                 If you are doing manual Software Testing and reporting bugs withour the help of any tool, assign a unique number to each bug report. This will help to identify the bug record.

·                 Clearly mention the steps to reproduce the bug. Do not assume or skip any reproducing step.

·                 Be Specific and to the point

Apart from these tips, below are some good practices:

·                 Report the problem immediately

·                 Reproduce the bug atleast one more time before you report it

·                 Test the same bug occurrence on other similar modules of the application

·                 Read bug report before you submit it or send it.

·                 Never ever criticize any developer or attack any individual

Find More Bugs while doing software testing

I’m going to tell you some useful tips to find more bugs while doing Software Testing:

• Understand the whole application or module in depth before starting the testing.
• Give stress on the functional test cases which includes major risk of the application.
• Your test data set must include the database records id you are going to test database along with various test case conditions.
• If it is not first software testing cycle, use previous test data pattern to analyze the current set of tests.
• Perform same tests on different test environment. Find out the result pattern and then compare your results with those patterns.
• Do some standard tests like putting the “%” sign or “*” or html tags in the text box and then see the results in output window.
• When you are tired, and then do some monkey testing.

Apart from these tips, one thing I would like to recommend to you that you must be thinking every minute to find a bug in the software. Just be Passionate about Software Testing.

Bug Life cycle

The steps in defect life cycle varies from company to company. But the basic flow remains the same. However, below I'm describing a basic flow for Bug Life Cycle:

·        A Tester finds a bug. Status --> Open

·        Test lead review the bug and authoriza the bug. Stats --> Open

·        Development team lead review the defect. Stats --> Open

·        The defect can be authorized or unauthorized by the development team. (Here the status of the defect / bug will be Open (For Authorized Defects) & Reject (For Unauthorized Defects).

·        Now, the authorized bugs will get fixed or deferred by the development team. Status of the fixed bugs will be Fixed & Status will be Deferred for the bugs which got Deferred.

·        The Fixed bugs will be again re-tested by the testing team (Here based on the Closure of the Bug, the status will be made as Closed or if the bug still remains, it will be re-raised and status will be Re-opened.

The above-mentioned cycle continues until all the bugs / defects gets fixed in the application.

Few more types of tests

Test Bed: An environment containing the integral hardware instrumentation simulators software tools and other support elements needed to conduct a test of a logically or physically separate component. All integral components of the test bed should be verified to be operational before introducing the component under test.