Defect Management Process: A Comprehensive Guide

In this blog, we will talk about defects and their management. We all know what defects refer to in software testing. But not many of us are aware of defect management and lifecycle.

A defect lifecycle is all the stages a bug goes through in its entire life. It begins as soon as the defect is found and ends when the tester closes the task and marks it complete.

Let’s start by understanding the meaning of defects in software testing and move ahead with discussing defect management in upcoming sections.

What is a Defect in Software testing?

A defect in the software is the change from user/business requirements that produce unwarranted results. It is an error or an issue in the application that produces results varying highly from the expected output. The defect can be anything if it does not stay true to the client’s specifications or functional documents.

Testers execute the test cases and identify the defects. They highlight them to the developers, who then work on the problem to resolve it. Accurately finding and mitigating defects is critical in software development as it ensures high-quality applications with functions that are desired by the users. And managing such defects in SDLC is called defect management in software testing. Let’s talk about it in the next section.

What is Defect management?

Defect management is the complete process of identifying, analyzing, documenting, tracking, and resolving defects during the SDLC stages. Defect management is important because it ensures that errors in the application are properly identified and rectified in a timely manner. It is a fairly daunting task to find, understand, report, and resolve the defect in a straightforward manner. Defect management in software testing greatly helps if the code is complex and has many modules. We all know it is impossible to make software 100% bug-free, but with defect management, you can minimize defects in the later stages and identify them in the earlier stages of SDLC.

The idea behind defect management is ‘prevention is better than cure.’ Thus, before an application reaches the users, testers launch a defect management process to successfully and efficiently lower the number of flaws. It will result in consumers getting top-quality software to use with fewer bugs.

The main goal of any defect management process is to:

i. Provide basic help in fixing and retesting the bugs

ii. Offer real-time information on the status of the defect

iii. Help testers understand how to release the bug report to the developers and stakeholders alike

iv. Determine the primary issues behind the presence of bugs and their quick resolution

v. Provide access to historical data of defects for the application

vi. Offer a way to structure the defect reporting and tracking document for other/future projects

Benefits of Defect management

There are several benefits to following the defect management process for every business:

i. It helps track defects that are technical and non-technical. You can employ any defect-tracking tool, such as Bugzilla, Zoho BugTracker, or BugNET.

ii. The defect management tools are a repository of all the information you require for any defect. Follow the defect management steps and quickly know which issues are still pending and for how long.

iii. Defect management also helps in determining how many bugs are present, open, and resolved in what time frame. It makes the complete defect identification and mitigation process accessible to everyone.

iv. With proper reporting of the defects, it is easier to access defect history, resolution, and current status to assign a timeline to the task.

v. Accurately following the defect management process helps to reduce costs, deliver high-quality products, and improve customer satisfaction.

vi. It offers defect metrics and automation tools. Depending on which application tools you use, the teams can understand what defects are due to changes in code, test cases, and data, allowing them to trace and analyze the defect trends.

Limitations of Defect management

After benefits, it only makes sense to learn about the shortcomings of the defect management process. This will help you to consider defect management at places where it will surely help you.

i. Inadequately handling the defect management process will increase your software development cost over time, eventually escalating the product price.

ii. Not tracking and resolving the defects on time will waste your resources and skyrocket your budget as you get closer to the market release date.

iii. It is difficult to communicate the defect status to customers and users if you are falling behind in fixing an issue.

iv. Defect management can be time-consuming if the defect reports and status are not up to date.

How Does the Defect Management Lifecycle Work?

Consider the flowchart below to understand the lifecycle of a defect. It starts with identifying a defect and ends with resolving and closing the issue. These are all the series of steps that define the defect life cycle in the Defect management process.

i. When testers find a bug in the application, they create a task describing the defect's nature and mark it as ‘New.’

ii. The ‘Open’ status of the task shows that it is ready to be assigned to a developer. QA also checks if the defect is valid.

iii. Next, the ‘Assigned’ status defines that the defect task is in with a developer now, who will start working on it to reach a resolution.

iv. Developers conduct their own review to check if the raised defect is, in fact, a bug. They can ‘Reject’ the task if the defect is not an issue. If it is an issue, developers continue fixing it as per the requirement and timeline mentioned in the task.

v. Once the defect task moves to ‘Fixed’ status, developers assign it back to the testers to check if the issue is resolved.

vi. The QA team then moves the task to ‘To be Verified’ status and tests if the defect is mitigated. If the issue is fixed, the task is closed. But if the defect remains, testers move it back to the top of the flowchart.

vii. They change the defect task status to ‘Re-open’ and assign it back to the developers for a proper fix.

Besides these steps, there are a few other statutes that you can encounter while following the lifecycle of a defect:

i. Duplicate: If the defect is reported twice or if two defects have the same manner.

ii. Deferred/Postponed: If the defect needs to be pushed to a later date to focus on a new release or another issue.
Not Reproducible: If the developer is not able to reproduce the defect on their system.

iii. Need additional information: When the developer requires more information about the defect to understand the issue and move toward a fix.

iv. Known defect: The task is marked as a ‘known defect’ when the developer knows it is in the production environment, the bug fix could already be in progress.

How to Manage Your Defects Effectively?

Defect management is a key element of the SDLC process. Irrespective of how severe or minor the defect is, it is vital to give proper attention to every issue. Properly raising, logging, tracking, and fixing defects is the right way of building software that is dependable and effective.

It is recommended to use the right tool for defect management.
Some commonly used defect management tools are:

1. Bugzilla
2. Jira
3. Mantis bug tracker
4. Trac
5. Redmine

If you do test automation then it is recommended to use a test automation tool that ingrates well with your defect management tool.

Some commonly used test automation tools are:

1. Testsigma
2. Appium
3. Selenium
4. Testcomplete
5. Saucelabs

Summary

Every defect is important because it makes or breaks your business image. And every defect goes through a series of steps that starts when testers discover the issues and ends when testers verify and close the task. We talk about defects and their management in this blog.