Defect Management Process in Software Testing (Bug Report)

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.

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 d

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 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 The performance bug can cause huge i
1 High
is too slow user.
The login function of the
Login is one of the main function of th
2 website does not work Critical
website if this feature does not work, i
properly
The GUI of the website
The defect affects the user who use Sm
3 does not display correctly Medium
view the website.
on mobile devices
The website could not This is a serious issue since the user w
4 remember the user login High login but not be able to perform any fu
session transactions
This is an easy fix for development gu
5 Some links doesn’t work Low
can still access the site without these li
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.