Introduction

Any software you develop is going to have bugs and defects in it and that must not a big problem. To your surprise, the quality of the software doesn’t depend on the bugs it has, but it rather depends on how we deal with those defects.

To fix the bugs before we deploy software, we have to follow a defect management process. The defect management process is an integral part of software testing that helps deliver a bug-free, high performing software.

In this post, you will learn about the defect management process and its six stages. Let’s have a look at the 6 steps of the defect management process.

What is the Defect Management Process?

Defect management is a process to find and fix bugs in a software product. In a software development process, bugs and defects constantly keep on occurring. The reason behind this is the complex nature of the software development process.

Usually, software developers write large pieces of code and hence bugs appear. It’s evident that you cannot completely avoid the occurrence of bugs, but you can find and fix them. Therefore, there’s a need to follow a process to find and fix bugs. And that is effectively done by a defect management process.

6 Stages of a Defect Management Process

There are 6 stages of a defect management process:

Discovery

The first phase is the discovery phase in which the project team discovers defects. The discovery phase targets to find bugs before we deploy the software to avoid passing them to the end-user. Then QA specialists discover and acknowledge a defect and change the status to “accepted.”

Steps of Defect Discovery

• Identify a Defect: Try to detect most of the bugs in the initial stage before they can develop into a serious problem later.
• Report Defect: Once the testing team discovers a defect, they should communicate it to the team members.
• Later, the QA team can analyze it and take actions to fix it.
• Acknowledge Defect: The QA team communicates to the development team about the identified defects. Then the development team takes the responsibility to acknowledge the bug and plans to fix it.

Categorization

Once the QA team identifies the defects, they work on prioritizing the tasks. As you see a lot of defects in the discovery phase, it’s necessary to deal with the critical defects first. It helps to fix those bugs that make the most impact on your software product. Also, it saves up time and resources when you prioritize the tasks.

Defect Resolution

Then comes the major phase of a defect management process in software testing that is defect resolution. The main job in this phase is to fix the identified defects. QA specialists assign defects to the development team and they schedule the defects based on the priority. They work on the most critical bugs first and then deal with the less critical ones. Once they fix the defects, they send a defect resolution report to the QA manager.
Here are some important steps of the defect resolution process:

• Prioritize the risk: The development team gets all the identified defects and they prioritize them based on their impact. The team sets the most critical bugs on a high priority.
• Fix the defect: Now comes the step where the development team works on fixing the defects. First, they fix the high priority defects and then work on the lesser priority ones.
• Reporting: Once the development team fixes the defects, it’s their responsibility to send a report to the testing team. The report should include the list of fixed defects and other details. This way, it will help to document the solution to the defect.

Verification

Once the development team has successfully fixed the defects, the next step is to verify it. The testing team takes the responsibility to verify if the defects are resolved. This step is extremely important to ensure that the software product is free from defects. Also, if any problem occurs in fixing the defects, you can identify that in this step.

Closure

After you have gone through all the steps of finding and fixing the defects, here comes its closure. Then the team should change the status of the defect to closed. If you still have doubts about any of the defects, send a notice to the development team. In such a situation, you can again follow the above-stated steps to ensure the bugs are fixed properly.

Defect Reporting

Defect reporting is an extremely important step in the defect management process. In this step, QA managers prepare a defect report and share it with the other team members. Then the other team members share their feedback about the process and the status of the defects. It’s the responsibility of the management team to thoroughly read through the report and provide useful feedback.

There are several benefits of defect reporting. The major benefit is that it helps develop a clear communication channel between the development team and the QA team. Also, you can also track the defects in detail and can have an explanation related to the fixed defects. Moreover, each and every defect gets documented that can be used in the future. And it helps save time and other resources.