Purpose of Bug Reporting during Software Development

Whenever there is any deviation found within the application under test(AUT), then that deviation is identified as a Bug. A deviation can have many possible scenarios, ranging from an incorrect error message or even a spelling mistake to a wrong color scheme or something as critical as the software responses missing a step that is defined in the requirements.

The process of testing starts as soon as the first deliverable is deployed on the dev server. Testers start matching the software responses with the guidelines defined in the SRS and design document and look for any loopholes that may have been missed during development. The loopholes here are basically the negative scenarios that definitely need to be addressed during the development phase. It is the negative scenarios that help make the software more secure and robust.

At times bugs could lead to disagreements between the developers and the QA team members, but that is not the purpose of a bug really. A bug is used to identify all those critical details that need to be addressed as soon as the bug is reported. It is always said that the more bugs that are reported in the early stages of the development lifecycle, the better it is for later stages of the software. So whenever a bug is reported it should not be considered as if any action has been initiated against the developers, but rather as an opportunity to identify & address another aspect of the software that they have thus far overlooked.

Good Practices In Bug Reporting

As a tester, when you are reporting bugs, please make sure you document as much detail so that it is easier for both you and the developers to understand and reference it at any time.

• Steps to Reproduce - You should provide step-wise details such that any person reading the bug is able to replicate the scenario at their end.
• Expected Results - This is the part where you need to define what is the behavior expected when the above-mentioned steps are followed in the AUT.
• Actual Results - This section details the errors/mistakes that are found during the testing.
• Screenshot / Video - Record a video of the steps that were followed which led to the bug or take a screenshot and make sure to highlight the area where the bug is reported for. This really accelerates the time that is taken to understand the bug when looking at it from the developer's end or even the QA/tester's point-of-view, any time in the future.

As a tester make sure you follow such good practices and hopefully get as many bugs resolved as early as possible.

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