Tips to Write a Good Bug Report That Make You a Powerful QA

Bug is the deviation of the actual result from the expected result. Each bug found during the testing process must be reported for its further fixing.

A Bug Report is a document that contains information about bugs. It is the prime responsibility of the Testing Team to write a good Bug Report. The core intention is to get the bugs fixed effectively and ensure better communication between the Development Team.

A Good Bug Report always helps the Development Team and Non-Technical Persons to understand the Bug clearly. If the Bug Report is good, the chance of fixing it is high. Otherwise, it may lead to rejection or clarification. Before reporting a Bug, make sure that the Bug is reproducible.

Anyone can write a bug report. But writing an effective Bug Report is what that must be focused on. If your Bug Report needs to be an efficient form of communication with high chances of getting the bugs fixed, you need to know the nuances of writing it. It is an important step to guarantee Software Quality Assurance. Here are the essential tips to write a good Bug Report.

How to Report a Bug?

Nowadays we follow tools like Jira and Trello for reporting bugs. This helps us to get most of the components in these tools themselves rather than writing in an excel spreadsheet as we did earlier.

The essential components of the Bug Report template are as follows:

1. Defect ID - A unique ID helps in understanding a specific Bug. But now Tools like Jira, Gitlab will auto-generate this Ids.

2. Summary - It is a brief summary of the bug specifying the actual issue including the module etc.

Maintaining a bug tracking sheet can benefit your development team by improving productivity and functionality. Your team will spend less time investigating bugs and more time fixing them. If someone finds a bug, they can check the sheet to see if someone has already reported it or has started working on it. This prevents two people from working on the same bug at the same time.

3. Description - A detailed description of the bug containing test steps, expected and the actual results.

4. Test steps- The steps must contain each and every step from opening the application to the bug found.

5. Expected and Actual Result: Expected and Actual Results are necessary in a bug report. The former implies what the user is expecting or what the requirement contains, and the latter implies the outcome of the test execution.

6. Error type- Mention the error type like coding, design, browser compatibility, responsive etc. for better understanding.

7. Url - We have many test/staging/production URLs.So mentioning the URL will be necessary

8. Browser- Some bugs may be browser-specific. Therefore mentioning browser and version will help developers to catch the bug easily.

9. Priority -This describes the urgency of fixing of the bug. Ex: Immediate, High, Medium, Low

10. Severity - This describes the impact of the bug. Ex: Critical.Major, Minor, Low

11. Screenshot – Screenshot is a very important component which actually helps developers to understand the bug visually. We use tools like “Nimbuz screenshot”, “Sniping tool” for taking the screenshot.

If possible, we must include a Bug video which helps the developer to get a clear flow of the bug. Some Bug may have a lot of steps, so video recording helps developers easily to understand the flow. Tools like “DU Screen Recorder”, “Ice cream screen recorder” can help to record bug video

12. Status: When we are reporting the bug in a Bug tracking tool, the status will be new. Then we must change the status of the bug after further stages

13. Assignee - The developer to which the specific bug-fixing task is assigned.

Take care not to miss any of these key points while drafting a Bug Report.

A good Bug Report not only helps in understanding the Bug but also saves a lot of time and increases company productivity. It also helps in maintaining a good relationship between the Testing Team and Development Team.