Defect Management Process in Software Testing

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Defect Management Process in Software Testing

In this article, I am going to discuss Defect Management Process in Software Testing. Please read our previous article where we discussed Test Environments in Software Testing. At the end of this article, you will understand the following important pointers which are related to Defect Management Process in Software Testing.

1. What is Defect Management Process?
2. What is the Objective of the Defect Management Process in Software Testing?
3. Explain various stages of the Defect Management Process
4. What is the main purpose of the Defect Management Process?
5. What is Defect Workflow and States?
6. What are the Advantages of the Defect Management Process in Software Testing?
7. What are the Disadvantages of the Defect Management Process in Software Testing?

What is Defect Management Process?

The Defect Management Process (DMP), as its name implies, is a technique for handling issues by merely identifying and fixing faults. If defect management is carried out in a more efficient manner and with full attention, software that is less bug-ridden will be more easily available on the market. The defect management process is the foundation of software testing.

The most important task for any organization to do when faults have been found is to manage them. This is true for the project management or software development process participants as well as the testing team. Most organizations utilize the Defect Management Process to handle Defect Discovery, Defect Removal, and facilitate Process Improvement.

The Defect Management Process (DMP), as the name implies, controls defects by only identifying and correcting the errors. While it is hard to completely eliminate errors or flaws from software, many problems can be reduced by correcting or resolving them. The three primary goals of the defect management process are impact mitigation, early defect discovery, and defect prevention.

What is the Objective of the Defect Management Process in Software Testing?

The following is a discussion of the defect management method’s primary goal:

• DMP’s main goal is to reveal flaws at an early stage of the software development process.
• The execution of the defect management method will assist us in improving the procedure and software implementation.
• The impact or effects of software problems are lessened via the defect management method.
• The DMP, or defect management process, aids in defect prevention.
• Resolving or correcting problems is the primary objective of the defect management process.

Explain various stages of the Defect Management Process

There are various steps in the defect management process, and they are as follows:

Defect Prevention:

The first phase in the defect management process is defect prevention. The danger of defects is reduced in this stage by following processes, methodology, and accepted practices. The greatest way to lessen the effects of a flaw is to fix it during the initial stages of development. Because it is less expensive and the impact can be lessened in the initial stages of addressing or resolving faults. But for later stages, finding flaws and then resolving them can be expensive, and the impacts of a problem might even be exacerbated. The following crucial actions are part of the fault prevention stage:

1. Calculate Probable Impact: If the risk is encountered in this step, we can evaluate the financial impact for each crucial situation.
2. Reduce the anticipated impact: Once every significant risk has been identified, we may focus on the biggest threats to the system and attempt to reduce or eliminate them. Risks that can’t be eliminated will lessen their likelihood of happening and their financial impact.
3. Determine Critical Risk: When it comes to defect prevention, we can immediately pinpoint the system’s key risks that, if they materialize during testing or at a later stage, will have a greater impact.

Delivered Baseline:

The Deliverable baseline is the second step in the defect management process. Here, the system, documentation, or product are defined by the delivery. We might say that a deliverable is a baseline after it reaches the predefined milestone. The deliverable is transported from one step to the next during this phase, and any existing system flaws advance to the subsequent step or milestone. In other words, we may claim that any further changes are controlled once a deliverable is baselined.

Defect Discovery:

Defect discovery is the following step in the defect management process. Defect finding is crucial at this early stage of the defect management procedure. Additionally, it could result in longer-term harm. A fault is only considered to have been discovered if developers have acknowledged or noted it as a legitimate one. We now know that it is virtually difficult to remove every flaw from a system and make it defect-free. However, we can find the flaws before they cost the project money. The fault-finding step includes the following stages; let’s examine them in more detail:

1. Identify a Defect: We must identify the defects in the early stages of defect detection before they develop into significant problems.
2. Report a Defect: The testing team must assign known issues to the development team as soon as a flaw is found so that it can be further investigated and fixed.
3. Acknowledge Defect: It is now the obligation of the development teams to acknowledge the error and continue to address it if the defect is a valid one after the test engineers have given the defect to the designated developers.

Defect Resolution:

In software testing, defect resolution is the process of correcting flaws step by step. A developer is first given responsibility for a problem and is then given a priority schedule for rectification, fixing, and sending a report of resolution to the test manager. Tracking and resolving difficulties is made simple by this procedure. To correct the flaw, you can take the actions below:

1. Assignment: The task was delegated to a developer or other technician, and the status was changed to Responding.
2. Fixing the schedule is a phase in which the development side is in charge. Depending on the priority of the issues, they will develop a schedule for fixing them.
3. Fix the flaw: The test manager keeps track of the defect-fixing process in comparison to the above timeline while the development team is working to address the flaws.
4. Inform the decision: When bugs are fixed, request a report from the developers detailing the resolution.

Process Improvement:

The aforementioned stage (defect resolution) involved organizing and fixing the defects. We will now examine the lower-priority issues because they are still crucial and have an impact on the system during the process improvement phase. From the standpoint of the process improvement phase, all acknowledged faults are equivalent to significant defects and must be corrected.

The individuals participating in this stage must remember and confirm the source of the defect. Depending on that, we can alter the validation process, base-lining document, and review process to potentially uncover faults early on and reduce the cost of the procedure. These tiny flaws help us figure out how to improve the procedure and get rid of any flaws that could lead to system or product failure in the future.

Management Reporting:

The process of defect management ends with management reporting. It is a crucial and important step in the defect management procedure. In order to increase the defect management process and ensure that the generated reports have an aim, management reporting is necessary. The evaluation and reporting of defect information, put simply, supports project management, process improvement, and organization and risk management. The project teams’ information gathering on individual problems is the foundation of management reporting. As a result, each organization must take into account the data obtained throughout the defect management process and the classification of individual problems.

What is the main purpose of the Defect Management Process?

The following list outlines the primary goals of DMP for various projects or organizations:

• Operational assistance for merely fixing and retesting faults that are discovered.
• To provide feedback for a status and progress report on the defect.
• To contribute ideas for guidance on defect release.
• To determine the primary cause of the fault and the appropriate course of action.

What is Defect Workflow and States?

Many organizations use technology to perform software testing that records defects throughout the bug/defect lifecycle and also includes defect reports. At each stage of the defect lifecycle, there is typically one owner who is in charge of completing the necessary tasks to advance the defect report to the next stage. If we encounter the following circumstance, a defect report may occasionally not have an owner in the latter stages of the defect lifecycle:

• The defect report is canceled if the defect is invalid.
• If the problem won’t be rectified as part of the project, the defect report is regarded as delayed.
• If the fault can no longer be found, the defect report is deemed to be non-reproducible.
• If the issue has been resolved and tested, the defect report is deemed to be closed.

Defect States: The testing team must manage faults in the following three states if they are found during testing:

• Initial State: It is the initial defect state, also referred to as the open state. The task of gathering all the information needed to correct the flaws in this stage falls to one or more test engineers.
• Returned State: Return state is the second defect state. In this case, the individual receiving the test report rejects it and requests more details from the report’s author. In a returned state, the test engineers have the option of adding more details or accepting the report’s rejection. The test manager should check for errors in the initial information collection process itself if several reports are denied. The rejection state or clarification state are other names for the returned state.
• Confirmation State: The test engineer conducted a confirmation test to ensure that the defect had been repaired before reaching the last state of defect, known as the confirmation state. It is accomplished by doing the same actions that revealed the flaw during testing. The report is finished if the flaw is fixed. And if the problem was not fixed, the complaint was reopened and sent back to the owner who had originally saved the defect report for correction. A resolved or verified state is another name for a confirmation state.

What are the Advantages of the Defect Management Process in Software Testing?

The benefits of the Defect Management Process are:

• Resolve All Defects: The “Resolve All Defects” approach facilitates the assurance of rectifying all tracked issues, ensuring that any discovered defects have been effectively addressed and resolved.
• Provide Useful Metrics: In addition to automation tools, DMP offers useful defect metrics. These defect metrics are useful for reporting and ongoing development.
• The software will function as intended and be of higher quality as a result of faults being found and fixed.
• More effective use of resources and quicker defect resolution are both results of the Defect Management Process, which offers a systematic way to handle faults.
• Better teamwork – The Defect Management Process promotes communication and teamwork between various teams, including development, testing, and management, which results in a more efficient and unified development process.

What are the Disadvantages of the Defect Management Process in Software Testing?

The Defect Management Process has some downsides, including:

• If DMP is mishandled, it will lead to a notable rise in expenses over time, consequently causing an escalation in the product price.
• If faults or defects are not handled correctly at an early stage, they may later cause more harm and increase the cost of repair or resolution.
• Additional negative effects, such as lost revenue, lost clients, and tarnished brand reputations, may result from improper DMP implementation.
• Overhead – The Defect Management Process necessitates a substantial amount of overhead, such as time spent logging and prioritizing faults as well as overseeing the defect tracking system.
• Resource limitations – The Defect Management Process may call for a large investment in employees, technology, and software, which may be difficult for smaller organizations.

In the next article, I am going to discuss Regression Software Testing. Here, in this article, I try to explain Defect Management Process in Software Testing. I hope you enjoy this Defect Management Process in the Software Testing article.