By – Shraddha Pande
A skilled QA tester knows that the most important part of the role is perhaps the ability to create effective bugs. A bug is not useful to the testing process if it is not reproducible and properly documented. Developers rely on clear and understandable bug reports to pinpoint what needs to be fixed.Thus, it is critical that these reports and the identified bugs capture all of the necessary data and criteria.

 

An effective bug must have these qualities:

• • Easily Reproducible:

The basic feature of a bug report is that it must be easily reproduced. For this it should have these:

1. Title: The bug title should be a one-line accurate description.
2. Steps: The steps to reproduce the bug must be few, clear and relevant.
3. Summary: The actual and expected results must be descriptive enough so that the developer has a clear understanding of the problem. The expected results must describe precisely what needs to be fixed.
4. Additional help: Whenever possible, attach a screenshot or video of the bug to the bug report to give the developers a more complete picture of the bug scenario.
5. Platforms affected: Check the bug in all possible environments. For example, in website testing, one would run the scenario with different operating systems, browsers and mobile devices (versions and platforms) to reproduce the bug in different environments.

• Severity and Priority:

The bug found should be labeled with the Severity (Critical, Major, Normal, Minor, Trivial and Enhancement) it can cause to the application as well as the Priority (High, Medium or Low) in which it has to be fixed.

• Not a Duplicate:

The bug should be checked with the other bugs tracked to avoid duplication.

• Deferrable or Not Deferrable:

Internal testers should also check the bug to ascertain if it can be fixed in the next build release.
After these steps are completed, the QA engineer checks all of the above features, discusses the bug found with the testing lead and development team and then, finally, creates the bug.

Conclusion

While the overall process outlined here is the basis of effective bug production, never underestimate the importance of good communication skills in the successful documentation and verbal explanations of the issues. A knowledgeable and respectful dialogue between QA and development leads to greater understanding of the issues and a stronger end product.
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