Defect Tracking Process

July 1, 2019

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What is Defect Tracking Process

Defect tracking spans across various levels of software testing. A defect may be captured during design, development or testing phase. Each phase can be backtracked to a previous one in order to map the defect to its appropriate root cause.

Defect tracking mechanism is a very crucial aspect of a software development process which must be dealt with great deal of accuracy. The implications of defects hidden within the system may prove to be a peril, if not handled with the right acumen.

When the software testing life cycle is planned, the details regarding uncovered defects must be clearly documented by the test team. A proper defect tracking system shall aid the developers in their defect correction activities. Defects must therefore be prioritized so that high priority defects are dealt with first gradually moving on to the lower priority defects.

Eventually as the team keeps solving the issues/defects, the solutions are integrated into a new software build, which instigates retesting. The testers record such proceedings into the defect tracking tool. The fixed defect status report must include the description of the fixed as well as other affected areas of the system.

The following points describe the ways to carry out defect tracking. Precisely these can be described as the steps or process of defect tracking.

• Analysis: In analysing an application, a tester needs to be a keen observer and should also possess a great deal of knowledge in this regard. A tester is expected to apply diagnostic observation to be able to uncover the test scenarios, from both a positive as well as negative approach.
• Defect Entry: If it occurs to the tester that an unexpected system behaviour has occurred which turns out to be a defect, it should be entered into the defect tracking tool by the tester.
• Recurrence: How shall a recurring defect be tracked is or handled should be analysed, whether the defect needs to be marked as a new defect or the previous defect be reopened.
• Closure: Ideally the test manager should close the defect after all the relevant issues have been resolved.

Summary:

It is quite essential to keep a track of the solved defect records for historical purposes. The reason behind such an activity is to enable the test engineers to refer to the previous defects that might help them in analysing their current situation.

Once the defect fixing task is over, the corrected code should be verified with the help of software configuration management tool. This way a cycle of test series follows one after the other until a final product is achieved.