What is a Bug Report in Software Testing?

What is a Bug Report in Software Testing: When an application is developed or it’s live in production, there is a chance of encouraging the bugs. During working on the application if a tester or an end-user found any bug in the application then they need to report that bug to the developer so that Developers can fix the issue.

But most of the time the beta testers or the end-users are not aware of how to write the Bug report which includes all the details the developers have to know so that they can able to reproduce the mentioned bug and fix the same.

When you’re a developer trying to sort through the reports you receive, you know that there’s more to reporting a bug than simply announcing that the app is “broken”. Even when testers and users take the time to write detailed reports, they can still be too cluttered or ambiguous to be truly helpful.

If you want to save time and improve the quality of your bug reports, standardize them! Having a standard format makes it easier for everyone involved – from developers to testers to users. In fact, we’ve found standardized reports so that they can save up to 45% of your time!

Post On:	How to Write a Good Bug Report?
Post Type:	Manual Testing Tutorials
Applicable For:	Freshers & Experience
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What Is A Bug Report in Software Testing?

We create artifacts whenever we test any application for future reference. Just like other testing artifacts, defect reports or bug reports are also considered artifacts. This artifact comes into play when testers start test execution.

The purpose of this bug report is a helpful document that provides information about areas in software or on a website that need improvement. The report outlines specific reasons for why an issue exists, and can also include suggestions for how to resolve the problem.

To create a great bug report, be concise and focus on only one issue while providing clear, step-by-step instructions for the developer. In addition, include environment details to help them reproduce the bug. By doing so, you will help the developer troubleshoot the issue and fix it more quickly.

How to Write a Bug Report?

What should an ideal bug report look like? While there might be small variations depending on the type of application, there are a few elements that are essential for all bug reports.

Bug report Fields: This will may differ from organization to organization. Because some organization is using some paid tools, and some are excel or other available resources to create a defect report. Let’s assume a sample bug report having the below fields:

• Title
• Bug ID
• Build Number
• Severity
• Priority
• Assigned to
• Reported by
• Reported on
• Reason
• Description
• Status
• Environment

Title: A well-crafted title is concise and provides the developer with a snapshot of the bug. It should include the app component and the specific action or circumstances in which the bug occurred. This makes it easy for the developer to find and fix the issue, and also makes triaging bugs simpler.

Example: [Chat] Profile picture is blacked in chat

Bug ID: If you’re creating the defect report in an Excel file, make sure to include the defect ID according to your organization’s standards. And if you’re using a paid tool, you don’t need to worry about this – the tool will automatically create the ID for you.

Build Number: Producing tasks in builds is the responsibility of developers in the organization. So when you are creating a defect report, it’s your responsibility to mention the build number. This will help the developer easily find and fix the defect. Remember to always include the build number!

Severity: Severity means the impact of the bug on the customer business. There are different categories of severity like:

• Blocker
• Critical
• Major
• Minor
• Trivial

Priority: Priority defines how soon the bug should be fixed. The testers set the priority of a bug. Based on the priority, developers can understand how soon that defect should need to fix. There are different categories are also available for priority like

• High
• Medium
• Low
• Lowest
• Blocker
• Critical
• Major
• Trivial

Assigned To: Who is going to fix this defect.

Reported by: who is find this defect

Reported on: Date of find the defect

Reason: Type that’s like Defect / Enhancement

Status: Here, you need to mention the status of the bug. If you just found the bug and report, then the status should be new. There are different status are there like New/ Assigned/ Open/ Fixed/ Test/ Verified/ Closed/ Reopen/ Duplicate/ Deferred/ Rejected/ cannot be fixed/ Not Reproducible/ Need more information

Environment: Different apps can behave differently depending on their environment. This part should include all the details about the environment setup and configuration on which the app is running. If you require specific info about the environment, make sure that is clear to your users and testers.

Description: This part will give an overview of the bug, including how often it happens and under what circumstances it appears.

Steps to reproduce: what are the steps need to follow to produce the same defect. Here you have mentioned each step so that developers can easily reproduce the same defect without any confusion.

Expected Result: Here, you have to mention what should be the expected result.

Actual result: Here, you have to mention the actual result you are getting when you are executing your test cases.

What is a good bug report?

Not everyone can write a bug report effectively. It takes skill to craft a helpful report that developers can use to squash bugs. Here are some tips to help you write an awesome bug report.

Useful bug reports are those that result in fixing that bug. A good bug report has to be:

Reproducible Steps: When reporting a bug, make sure to include the steps needed to reproduce it. Keep the steps short, simple, and easy to follow – this will make it easier for others to replicate the bug and help to solve it. However, don’t be afraid to include too many details; the more information you provide, the better.

Our goal is to help developers reproduce bugs more easily, so they can get a better idea of what might be going wrong. Without repro steps, bug reports are minimally useful and only serve to waste time and effort. Make sure to communicate this to your testers and end-users.

Specific and Informative: Do not spread your problems throughout the essay. Try to be specific and informative. Strive to summarize the problem in minimum words yet in an effective way. And in any case, don’t combine multiple problems even if they seem similar. Write different reports for each problem.

So the goals of a bug report are to:

• Explain a bug to the developer and show where it is
• Help the developer fix it with the minimal time cost

How Defect Report helps developers exactly:

• Tells about issues that they are not aware of
• Helps determine new features that they may not have thought of
• Help get a feel as to how their customers use the software so they can make it better

And if you write your bug report effectively, then the bug has more chances to be fixed. So fixing bugs are directly dependent on how you report them. We Have mentioned all fields which are used while raising a bug, but all the fields are not mandatory to use. It depends upon the organization.

Let us know in your company how you write a bug report using which fields and how you are the plan to make the bug report more informative. Please write comments if you find anything incorrect, or you want to share more information about this topic discussed above, then you can use our contact us page.