Avoiding The Million Dollar Question: How Did The QA Team Miss This Defect?
We've all been asked the question, but how can we improve things so it isn't asked again?
One of the primary goals of any good QA team is to make sure that no defect evades detection long enough to get into production. Finding defects at the right time, which ideally is early during the software development life cycle, will save time and cost and make sure your organisation’s customers are happy with the product.
Sometimes defects make it to production. When this happens, the most common question you hear is ‘How did QA miss this defect?’ and it can be tough for the test team to defend their work.
As we all know, testing cannot guarantee that any product is 100% defect free. That’s why every mobile app or OS has different versions, each of which includes the fixes for the defects which were missed in testing. Of course, it is not only members of the QA team who are responsible for defects. Every single individual in the organisation is accountable for the quality of his or her own deliverables.
This article discusses the possible reasons why defects are missed during the testing phase or pre-production phase. And it describes the mitigations which the QA team can adopt so that a quality product is always delivered.
Key Reasons For Defect Misses
Below are some of the key reasons why defects make it into production:
- Customer scenarios are not covered
- Requirements are not clear or are otherwise inadequate
- Test impact for the bugs is not updated or incorrect
- Agreeing to the defects marked ‘As Designed’
- Accepting code changes after QA sign-off
- Test automation is not robust
- Incorrect defect severity and priority
- Alpha and beta testing are not performed
Reasons For Defect Misses And Preventative Measures
The table below gives an overview of some of the primary reasons for defect misses and how to avoid them.
Frequent Problems With Defects Logged By Customers
- Testing is performed only on older version of a browser, an OS, or mobile devices
- The issue occurs only intermittently and root cause analysis cannot be performed
- Defect is specific to a particular customer and cannot be reproduced in test environments
- ‘Steps to Reproduce’ are not clear, or the defect description is empty and does not include any attachments or screenshots
Conclusion
In this article, we have discussed the different reasons why defects can be missed by the QA team. We’ve also mentioned some preventative measures you can take so that defects are caught early during the life cycle. That being said: quality is everyone’s responsibility, and customer satisfaction should be our mantra.
For Further Information
- Ten Reasons The Whole Team Owns Defects, by Kate Paulk
- Reverse Engineer Your Way To Adopting A Risk-based Testing Approach, by Nishi Grover Garg
Venkat Ramesh Atigadda works as a QA Lead at Tata Consultancy Services Limited and also performed the role as a Solution Developer while working for Assurance Center of Excellence (CoE). He has worked for different industry domains including healthcare, energy, and insurance, and has published various testing articles for Testing Experience and Testing Circus magazines.
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