Effective Defect Management Amadori Courses Delivering an Effective

Effective Defect Management Amadori Courses: Delivering an Effective Test Process 1

• The 4 elements essential for effective defect management and reporting are 1. 2. Introduction 3. 4. Good Quality defect records A Defect Management process which supports rather than hinders Accurate and up to date defect metrics Effective reporting • What steps can we take to bring each of these about? Amadori Courses: Delivering an Effective Test Process 2

1. Good Quality Records? • Step 1: establish what makes a great defect record… • Step 2: review all defects against this “Gold Standard” and remediate defect records which are not up to scratch • Step 3: do not allow defects to be worked upon unless minimum quality criteria are met so far as defect reporting is concerned Amadori Courses: Delivering an Effective Test Process 3

What makes a Great Defect then? • A good defect report should be • Clear • Provide supporting documentation where appropriate • Include versioning data where appropriate • Repeatable • Non-Emotive • Referenced back to underlying requirement • Correctly prioritised Amadori Courses: Delivering an Effective Test Process 4

A good Process can also improve the Quality of your defect reports • All new defects should be reviewed before being assigned to someone to resolve • Issues with the defect report need to be called out and rectified BEFORE work on resolving it begins • “Saving Time” by not doing this at the start of the process usually means 1. The defect takes much longer to resolve 2. The “resolution” often isn’t what is needed Amadori Courses: Delivering an Effective Test Process 5

• No matter how well you raise your defect, if it doesn’t get to the right person it won’t get resolved properly…. . Why an effective process matters • In the absence of good process • Progress in fixing your issues is likely to be slower than it should be • Any success you achieve will be despite and not because of your defect management process Amadori Courses: Delivering an Effective Test Process 6

Marks of a good defect management process 1. 2. 3. 4. Issues move quickly to the right people The most critical issues get worked on first The status of a defect is clear at all times A good process should assist not hinder progress Amadori Courses: Delivering an Effective Test Process 7

Marks of a good defect management process 1. 2. 3. 4. Issues move quickly to the right people The most critical issues get worked on first The status of a defect is clear at all times A good process should assist not hinder progress How do we achieve these goals? Amadori Courses: Delivering an Effective Test Process 8

• In all but the smallest projects assigning issues directly to an individual is NOT a good idea Moving Issues quickly to the right person • Becomes difficult to spread the workload effectively across the team Amadori Courses: Delivering an Effective Test Process 9

• Can lead to • “Favourite developer” syndrome Moving Issues quickly to the right person • “Whoever shouts loudest” syndrome • “Who spoke last” syndrome • And yet you want individual responsibility for a defect at all points in its lifecycle • How can we reconcile these two issues? Amadori Courses: Delivering an Effective Test Process 10

Moving Issues quickly to the right person • All new issues should initially be assigned to a single person within each team • That person allocates the issue to the best person taking • Complexity • Criticality • Workload • Into account Amadori Courses: Delivering an Effective Test Process 11

Moving Issues quickly to the right person • The assignment of a defect should be directly related to its status • If there appears to be a mismatch between the status and the assignee this needs to be investigated. • Ask the question • How can THIS person progress THIS defect in its current state…. . ? • If the simple answer is that they can’t then the issue needs to be reassigned to someone who does Amadori Courses: Delivering an Effective Test Process 12

• It is the responsibility of the person assigned an issue to either 1. Resolve the issue 2. Pass it onto someone else who can Taking Responsibility/Passin g the Buck • Sitting on an issue and doing nothing should NOT be an option Amadori Courses: Delivering an Effective Test Process 13

Taking Responsibility/Passin g the Buck • Watch out for issues which ping-pong between teams and never seem to get resolved • May signal a flaw in the process • Or issues within one or both of the teams Amadori Courses: Delivering an Effective Test Process 14

• Sounds obvious in theory Critical Issues get worked on first… BUT • much harder to enforce in practice Amadori Courses: Delivering an Effective Test Process 15

Critical Issues get worked on first… • Try and look out for the following common problems • “I fixed a few minor issues whilst I was working on a major problem” – in almost every case the time spent on these minor issues could have been better spent elsewhere • Critical issues being raised against a non critical area of functionality • “Severity Inflation” – if every issues is rated critical then nothing is really critical any more…… • This is where an effective Triage process should help Amadori Courses: Delivering an Effective Test Process 16

Ensure that the status of a defect is clear at all times • Ensure that each status in the workflow has a unique role and serves an obvious purpose • Confirm that a status means the same thing for everyone involved in the project • Remind everyone (if necessary) that • “Fixed” is not the same as “Closed” • “Fixed” is not the same as “Ready for Test” • It may often be worth having “Ready for UAT” as a separate status to “Ready for Test” Amadori Courses: Delivering an Effective Test Process 17

1. Design from scratch a simple workflow which will allow you to track a defect through its lifecycle Exercise 2. Establish some OBJECTIVE criteria by which a defect might be placed into one of the following classes 1. Critical 2. High 3. Medium 4. Low Amadori Courses: Delivering an Effective Test Process 18