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Defect triage or bug triage is a process of reviewing, categorizing, and prioritizing the reported bugs. The failure categorization plays an important role in the defect triage process as it helps to determine the type of failure. With ReportPortal, you can easily group the defects into categories.
Best practices of defect triage process include bug detection and categorization, bug documentation in the bug tracking system (BTS) and regular bug triage meetings. Let’s look at each of these points.
How to triage defects with ReportPortal
Using ReportPortal, you can easily carry out categorization of failures based on issue roots.
To do this, open the "Make Decision" modal for the "To Investigate" item and review logs, screenshots, and video recordings. Based on this comprehensive analysis, you can categorize this failed item. In ReportPortal there are 4 main defect types groups: Product Bug, Automation Bug, System Issue, No Defect. There is also the option to create subcategories.
In addition, during manual defect triage, you can take advantage of our ML-powered failure reason detection. If you’re not sure which category to put the bug in, use a hint from ML Suggestions. Also, pay attention to the similar "To Investigate" items section, which displays test items with similar logs. In this way, the defect type can be applied to many test items at once.
Moreover, ReportPortal automatically groups tests by the same unique errors, which also speeds up test failure analysis.
How to create defect in BTS
First, the team needs to determine which fields are required. Typically, when creating a bug (or defect/issue, which are the same thing), the following fields are filled in: summary, steps to reproduce, estimate, severity, priority, and attachments.
It is also recommended to link the bug to other work items, like user stories or requirements, so it is not isolated. This way, you can more efficiently pinpoint the root of the problem, determine when it occurred, and identify potential causes.
What is the bug triage meeting in the scrum process?
This is a session where bugs are reviewed and discussed, typically with the participation of customers, developers, and testers. During a bug triage meeting, each bug is analyzed in detail, and its severity and priority are determined. If it is clear who will handle the bug, it might be assigned to that person during this meeting. If it's not, the bug is assigned to either the Backend or UI team.
As a result, there are no uncategorized bugs left in the backlog. This greatly helps in the future, allowing for a swift understanding of what needs to be fixed first and what can be addressed later.
What's the difference between severity and priority? The bug's priority is assessed based on its importance for a specific version. For instance, during a bug triage meeting, discussion can be held about when this bug fix should be ready. If there's a bug that the customer wants to be fixed as quickly as possible and in the most recent version, it will be given the highest priority. On the other hand, severity is a measure of how critical a bug is to the application's operation. For example, if a login button looks different from the design, it doesn't crash the application, so the severity of such a bug would be low. However, its priority would be high because it's visible on the homepage and presents an aesthetic issue.
Regular bug triage meetings can help avoid scenarios where only the reporters are aware of the identified bugs.
What are the benefits of the defect triage process in agile?
1. Effective workload planning in the team.
The tasks can be distributed based on what needs to be fixed first and what can wait.
2. Risk Management.
Through the triage process, defects are evaluated according to their severity and the impact they have on the software. This allows for the reduction of the likelihood of serious issues.
3. Improved Communication.
If a stakeholder is present at a bug triage meeting, the expected results for bugs with unclear requirements can be discussed immediately to prevent the team from having to redo everything multiple times later.
After defect triage, testers can build a QA metrics dashboard. This dashboard provides a visual representation of all bug-related statistics: the total number, how many Product Bugs/Automation Bugs/System Issues there are, how many bugs are in a specific version, and the project's most problematic area.
In conclusion, ReportPortal can significantly facilitate defect triage by enabling comprehensive analysis and categorization of failures. Defect/Bug triage is a crucial step in software testing. By systematically categorizing and prioritizing reported bugs, teams can streamline workflows, enhance communication, and ultimately contribute to the successful delivery of high-quality software products.