How to Report a Bug: Tips for QA Efficiency

Bug reports are detailed documents usually made by QA engineers. They help to describe an issue in an application or a software product to the developers for resolution.

They play an important role in ensuring quality. Reporting a bug efficiently helps to clearly define and present the issue at hand for prompt resolution.

Reporting a bug with efficiency helps in better productivity of the team members in the software development and testing lifecycle. A great bug report lays the strong foundation for expertise in QA and is an essential component of a great QA strategy.

Bug reporting has always been there in the QA scene. A good bug report is always desirable. But a great bug report is what one should aim for.

Reporting a bug is not easy. It may sound easy, but it requires a lot of information to be included and a good amount of expertise to compile. It is analogous to documenting an issue. And what do we expect from a document? Yes, it should be a true source of information for all.

A badly or poorly written bug report can confuse developers and can become a concern while debugging. It could lead to messy situations among fellow or cross-functional team members. Moreover, it could pose a challenge in agile teams where many people work in collaboration.

Bug reports may not be just for developers anymore. Project managers, stakeholders, and many other key members might very well go through these reports.

In this post, we will focus on the key aspects of reporting a bug and QA engineers can especially benefit from it.

We’ll discuss how to report a bug for maximum efficiency in QA tasks by looking at things to include for a great bug report. We’ll then review some common pitfalls and things to look out for while reporting a bug.

Let’s get started.

Reporting a bug is like creating a systematic document that contains all the relevant details. These details need to be very accurate. A great bug report is mostly self-explanatory and should be easily readable.

The core idea is not to miss any information. You never know who will be looking at the report. It’s important to make sure that the bug report is usable and can be analyzed by all, even if they are not directly responsible for resolving it.

This can be a relief, especially for the developers who are responsible for fixing them.

Let’s look at what to include for a great bug report while reporting a bug to the developers.

Bug ID 🆔

A bug report should have a unique ID assigned to it as an identification tag. This is usually assigned by a bug tracking system that is used to report a bug.

Title 🔍

It should be specific to the issue. A great bug report should have it nailed. It is a summary of the main issue in just a few words.

Description ✍️

The description should be concise and present the issue with accuracy. It should explain the how, when, and where of the issue.

Visual Proof 📸

Adding screenshots and screen recordings is a go-to approach while reporting bugs. Although it is fairly common to see these while doing follow-ups in a bug tracking system, having it attached along with the bug report from the start helps to describe issues in action.

Steps to Reproduce 🔢

QA engineers must write down clear steps to reproduce the bug or an issue. The steps must also be numbered. If there are any repeated or recurring steps, it should be mentioned.

Expected Result 😄

The results that are expected by the QA engineer must be clearly mentioned as well. It’s very easy to miss this information while reporting a bug. It’s important not to make assumptions so that the developers can easily understand the expected result by themselves. Even if they do, it should not be skipped.

Actual Result 😟

Although the issue might be obvious and clearly visible after recreating stepwise, it should be absolutely included while reporting a bug.

Severity Level 🎚️

The issue must be marked with the impact of it on the existing system. For instance, if an issue causes the app to crash, it ideally comes under critical issues. On the other hand, if there is a UI issue causing two UI components to show some inconsistency in the text, it can be categorized as a minor issue. The usual options for severity include critical, major, minor, etc.

Priority Level ⏫

Priority levels represent the urgency of an issue to be resolved. For instance, if there is a bug that is impacting a core feature of an application impacting a large number of users, it is usually a high-priority issue. The usual options available for priority include urgent, high, medium, and low,

Technical Information ⚙️

Reporting a bug with all the technical or developer-friendly information is extremely important. Information like console logs, network requests, and system information are keys for developers to debug.

Attachments 📎

If there are attachments required to recreate an issue, it has to be added to the bug report. For instance, if there are test scripts or sample data used by the QA to test functionality, it should be included with the report. This helps the developers immensely.

Additional Reference 📃

It’s a good practice to include reference documents such as user stories, business requirement docs, or flow charts while reporting a bug. These help to clear any confusion regarding the issue in light of the exact requirements or expectations.

Assigned To 🧑‍💻

The issue has to be assigned to a particular person or a team member. This is a no-brainer task while reporting a bug.

Assigned By 🧑‍💼

Again, the person or QA engineer who is reporting a bug should be mentioned in the bug report. The developers or concerned people who are trying to resolve the issue can communicate with the reporter.

A great bug report is good enough for the job. However, there are some areas of focus for efficiency in QA.

Here are 5 tips for QA efficiency while reporting a bug:

Tip 1 # Consistent Reports 🙌

A great bug report should be consistent in providing the details. Sure, there is a lot of information that needs to be included, but it ensures less back-and-forth communication. Since everything is written very consistently while reports are being shared, there are fewer chances of confusion.

Tip 2 # Proper Naming Conventions for Attachments 🏷️

While attaching other docs while reporting a bug, the attachment names should be very specific and meaningful for effective reporting. For instance, if a docx file is shared with the report for reference, it should have a proper name. Instead of names like New Document or Untitled, the name should be properly there. This is often overlooked and the attachments are just sent with random names.

Tip 3 # Including Facts to Maintain Objectivity 📊

While reporting a bug, facts must be clearly mentioned. Assumptions and biasing should be avoided at all costs. Using negative languages like the functionality is working terribly, or unusable must not be included. Another example is to use the exact facts. Rather than including vague statements like the app is very slow, the app takes 3 seconds to load instead of 1 second makes much more sense.

Tip 4 # Be Careful with the Visual Proof or Attachments 📎😐

Adding visual proofs like annotated screenshots or videos is very important. However, adding too many of them can work the opposite. They are not the only source of information to be relied upon. Other things like developer-friendly details and other reference docs are equally important. This helps improve QA efficiency.

Tip 5 #  Wise Selection and Usage of Tools 🔦

Project management tools are a key part of any software project. Reporting a bug also makes use of such tools. This helps to track the issues better. It’s highly recommended to use productivity tools for better time management and bug management for QA processes.

The developers of BetterBugs see quality as an integral part of all software products and applications. For us, quality is not an after-thought, but a unified component of every software.

Bug reports have always been an important document to ensure quality. We understand that and so does BetterBugs.

It provides easy workflows for reporting a bug for maximum QA efficiency and minimum time loss. It’s made for QA efficiency with capabilities like taking screenshots of issues, screen recording for issues in action, and developer-friendly technical information-sharing functionality.

It can help not only to create great and sharable bug reports, but also provide easy integrations with project management tools like Jira, Slack, Asana, GitHub, and more.

It’s available for free as a Google Chrome Extension.

I hope you enjoyed the post.

See you again soon with another exciting piece of writing.

Happy Hunting!