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The Defect Dance

When you find a defect in your test environment, it's always a nice feeling. You've managed to discover something that likely no one has discovered before.

 When you discover a defect, what do you do next? Do you just raise a defect, after all the team needs to hear about how awesome you are, do you speak to a developer.... Here's a handy little guide that you can use to ensure that you are as effective as possible as a QA.

 Ask yourself the following questions:
  • Is the bug reproducible?
    • If the answer is yes, then you've found a bug! 
    • If no, then I find it useful to make a mental note of the issue in case it happens again...
  • Is the bug in live?
    • If the answer to this is yes, then search the bug database, it may already have been logged, if it hasn't then raise a support issue or raise a bug, depending on what the company procedure is :)
    • If the answer is no, then still, check to see if the bug is a reoccurring bug and if it had been fixed previously and broke again, if the answer is yes, then raise a new bug and ensure there is an associated test case created to catch the bug again, if no raise a defect :) 
    • If it isn't a reoccurring bug then ask yourself (if you have domain knowledge) and speak to a developer, can the bug be fixed quickly, if it can then just liaise with the developer over the bug and let them fix it without raising a bug (there will be more about this in later posts, over when to raise a defect... ) if it can't, then go ahead, log a bug!

I've tried to summarise the above in a quick flow diagram below...


Obviously this won't work for every company, for example: if you're working on a brand new feature, the bug won't be in live so you can skip  that step...  However, I think it's a pretty useful set of questions that can help you decide what to do with a defect.

If anyone has anything to add to the defect dance or if you think there's a step that doesn't necessarily need to be there, then let me know! :)






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Comments

  1. Amar G Deogirikar10 May 2013 at 14:14

    I actually tried to make a similar version of defect dance, based on your idea. This is how it looks http://i.imgur.com/s65MaqE.png

    It is not very far from what you have!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Gareth Waterhouse14 May 2013 at 02:20

      Cool! I must admit though, I'd spend a bit more time if I can't recreate it first time, as I mentioned in future blog posts explaining why etc.

      Delete

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