Role of Bug Life Cycle in Software Testing

In software testing terminology, 'Bugs' are the result of mistakes or error made by the developer during the programming of software or at the time of designing.

Bug life cycle is a phase of software testing that deals with the removal of bug from a program to achieve the desired working of program. Let's explore out how this cycle works. In every development firm providing various IT infrastructure services, normally, if a bug occurs in a system or program, it is assigned to the developer of the program so as to fix that bug. From the time of the detection of the bug till the point the bug is fixed and closed, various stages are assigned to it. These stages can be listed as New, Open, Postpone, Pending Retest, Retest, Pending Reject, Reject, Deferred, and Closed.

During the testing phase of the software development, if any bug is encountered, the software test engineer has to identify and specify the information related to that bug before assigning it to developer. Few information like build version, submit on, product, module, severity, synopsis and description to reproduce are mandate fields required to be tagged while listing the bug details. Apart from these fields, there are some optional information that can also be filled in such as name of customer, browser, operating environment, attached files or snapshots. Once the log for the bug is made developer or the test manager review it. The test manager has to set the status of the bug. It can be open, can be assigned to developer or may also be deferred till the next release. If it is assigned to the developer, he has to work on it. The developer can also set the bug status as won't fix, couldn't reproduce, inadequate information or fixed depending upon the resolution from his end. If the status is set as fixed quality, analyst verifies it and set status as closed or open.

Lets us understand this process step by step by the help of below mentioned points involved in fixing the bug in every outsourced software development organization.

1. Whenever a bug is found in a system for the first time, the developer discusses it with the development team to confirm that bug is valid or not.

2. If the Test lead confirms it as valid bug, it is logged and the status is marked as 'New'.

3. The bug gets assigned to the software product development team after it is reported as new. If the development team verifies it as a valid bug, it is assigned to developer for solution and the status is changed to 'Assigned'.

4. As soon as the developer starts working on the bug, the status is modified to 'Open' indicating that the developer is working on it for finding a solution.

5. If the developer fixes the bug by making necessary changes, the status changes to 'Fixed' and then passed to the testing team for verification.

6. The testing team changes the status as 'Pending Retest' till the time it retest the fixed bug. 7. The test team leader changes the status of bug as 'Retest' from 'Pending Retest' as soon as the tester is assigned for it.

8. After the 'Retest' assignment, bug is tested again. Now, here if the software tester finds the bug as completely fixed they mark the status as resolved and close the issue.

9. But in case, after retesting the system, if the problem remains the same or still exists, then the bug is again re-opened by the tester and send to developer team.

10. Now, if the developer thinks that the system behavior is fine and it's not a bug, he rejects it and mark as 'Pending Reject'.

11. If test leader finds that system is working fine and in accordance with specification, the bug is rejected and marked as 'Rejected'.

Sometimes due to insufficient test data and many other reasons bug is also postponed for a certain time and marked as 'Postponed' status. Many times the reported bugs are not very important as the system works properly with these defects, so these bugs are avoided and marked as 'Deferred'.

In this way, the complete bug cycle flows. We all are well aware that no system can be made 100% perfect or bug free. But, a good software test engineer should always strive for finding out the maximum number of valid bugs in the software and get them fixed so as to achieve an output with minimal number of bugs that hardly affects the developed product, thus, helping every custom software development company to add a happy customer in its database.



Author's bio:

Christa Joe is the author of this article. She has been demonstrating her writing skills by writing the articles for web solutions providing companies like Q3 technologies since last two years. She is also used to write good articles for software development in gurgaon.

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