How Defect Management Tools Improve Software Reliability

There is no software in the world that is 100% defect-free. Developers spend a significant amount of time tracking bugs to ensure a high-quality product. Programming bugs can be annoying and make defect management difficult across the various lines of codes. The question is, should developers spend so much time on defect management? There are tons of defect management tools out there, many of them are free of cost which mostly suits smaller teams for fixing bugs on schedule without requiring a huge investment. Larger QA teams, however, may prefer paid options since they have more robust solutions to offer.

Defect management tools make reporting and tracking the progress of bugs easier from discovery to resolution. These tools are commonly used in coding and testing phases of the SDLC along with other purposes such as general issue tracking, simple task lists, help desk situations, contact management, etc.

Objectives of Defect Management Tools:

• The assignment of the tasks is done on the basis of employee skill set which is being tracked.
• Report generation for employee and manager makes the analysis much easier.

It's important to choose your tool wisely according to your budget and requirements. Unattended bugs can lead to bad user reviews and can impact your business in a negative way. Although it's impossible to meet all user requirements, efforts can be made to achieve most of the requirements and develop software solutions that are close to their expectations. With technological advancements, it is possible to upgrade the system and can be adapted by all environments. Since these solutions are based on object-oriented design, any changes in the system are manageable.

Major Components of Defect Management Tools:

• Interface (front-end)
• Database (back-end)

Database records:

• Severity of bugs
• Program behavior
• Identity of the person reporting the bug
• Programmers working on the bug

Requirements for Defect Management Tools:

1. Reporting facility– complete with fields that will let you provide information about the bug, environment, module, severity, screenshots, etc.
2. Assigning– What good is a bug when all you can do is find it and keep it to yourself, right?
3. Progressing through the life cycle stages– Workflow
4. History/work log/comments
5. Reports– graphs or charts
6. Storage and retrieval– Every entity in a testing process need to be uniquely identifiable, the same rule applies to bugs too. So, a bug tracking tool must provide a way to have an ID, which can be used to store, retrieve (search) and organize bug information.

Author Bio:

Ray Parker is a Senior Marketing Consultant with a knack for writing the latest news in tech, quality assurance, software development and testing. With a decade of experience working in the tech industry, Ray now dabbles out of his New York office.