Skip to main content

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! :)






Labels:

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

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What is a PBI?

After my last post, I had the question of what is a PBI... so I thought i'd write a short blog post about what they are and why they are used. A PBI is an acronym for Product Backlog Item. It is a description of a piece of work that your SCRUM team will develop and deliver. When you have a list of Product Backlog Items, you then refer to that collective list as a Product Backlog. The product backlog is often prioritised and yourteam will work through each PBI, and release on a regular schedule... I am however going deep into the world of Agile development, which isn't entirely what this post is about, so I will stop myself now. A Product Backlog Item is made up of the following: Title - This is often a one liner that gives the team an idea of what the PBI is about, although it can just be an ID for the item and the team work off of that. Description - Breaks down the PBI in a bit more detail, and can be written in any style, however I prefer it to be written as follow...
68 comments
Read more

Coding something simple.... or not! Taking a screenshot on error using Selenium WebDriver

I recently wrote a little function that takes a screenshot at the end of a test if it has errored. What sounded very simple at the start turned out to be quite a bit of work, and quite a few lines of code to handle certain scenarios! It's now over 50 lines of code! I'll start with what I had at the beginning, this was to simply take a screenshot in the working directory, we are using SpecFlow and Selenium to run the tests, so we are going to check if the ScenarioContext.Current.TestError isn't null, if it is, then using Selenium, take a screenshot (note the below code is a simplified version of what I had at the beginning). [AfterScenario]         public static void TakeScreenShotOnError()         {             if (ScenarioContext.Current.TestError == null) return;             var screenshotDriver = Driver as ITakesScreenshot;             if (screenshotD...
15 comments
Read more

The Stickman Tester... The full version complete with deleted "scenes"!

As some of you may have seen, a little while ago I performed a 99 second talk on the Stickman Tester for the Ministry of Testing. Owing to the fact that it had to be 99 seconds, this unfortunately meant that a verse was left out in order to keep it within the time frame! It's only now that I have found the time to put the deleted verse/scene back in, and re-record it and upload it! (It's now a 120 second talk!) It talks about a testers journey in an Agile team, about how not everybody has it as good as others, and basically talks about not giving up, keep searching, or trying to change your role to make it what you want it to be. Anyway, here it is, in all it's glory. Hope you enjoy it!
15 comments
Read more