Actions to be taken by a QA on finding a Critical Issue in Production

You've just released a product but QA finds a critical issue. How do you navigate this post-release crisis?

I would:

1. Create a ticket for the issue in the tracker board and update it as High Severity and High Priority.
2. Update the details, steps to reproduce along with screenshots and log details.
3. Update the ticket with the impact of the issue on the application.
4. Communicate about the ticket with the respective Stakeholders keeping the product owner in the loop.
5. If Possible, call upon a meeting with the respective stakeholders to discuss and take corrective measures as early as possible.

Note:

1. Check if the unit/integration/end to end automation test covers the test case of the issue. If not, make provisions to get it covered.
2. Add the case to the regression suite.
3. If a hot fix is provided, make sure the same patch is applied in the DEV/QA and other ENV as well so we have a the same build in all envs. This ensures that the bug is not only fixed in production but also avoids the future conflicts.

On resolution of the issue by the developers:

1. Ask the developers to desk-check the resolution and demo it to the QAs before deploying the builds to any environment.
2. Recheck all the scenarios in the desk check session itself in order to save time and get quality fix.
3. Ask the devs to write unit test for the resolution so we do not miss the issue any time again in near future
4. Cover the test case in the automation test scripts and add it to the regression suite.
5. Once everything works fine, ask the devs to deploy it to all other environments and retest it again with all combinations.
6. This issue should also be tested in production replica environment to make sure that after deployment it should work as expected.

Happy Testing!!