Background

Hi everyone, in this short article, i am going to explain about the process which we need to follow when we come across any defect in production. There is a software being deployed on the production server and being used by the realtime users. 

While using the software, they come across some defects and they approach their client with whom they had given contract to build,deploy and test their software.

 

When the application is deployed to production then end-users start using the application and come across some issues which you might have missed during your testing or you might have not covered in your edge case scenarios.

In that case, we should know how to handle such situations? Should we blame testers or developers or the whole team? What should we do? What actions should we take to overcome such situations?

Best Practices to remember & implement

Based on my real-time experience in the industry as a Tester, I would like to share some best practices with you so that they can help you at any point in time in your software testing career.

No Blame-game

Let’s not start the blame game rather focus on the best practices to prevent such defects to get into production.  You can implement them even if you are a new person in the team, a lead, or a QA Manager. So, let’s get started:

Best Practices to remember & implement

Here, is a list of some of the best practices based upon my experience handling production defects:

• 1. Primarily, analyze the defect.
• 2. RCA(root cause analysis) of the defect.
• 3. We should try to understand what was missed and whether have we covered the particular scenario during our testing.
• 4. If it was missed from your end, please accept the mistake. Be sincere about your work and ensure to take qualitative measures next time.
• 5. Defect format template, observe what all attributes it entails. If it is missing any important attribute, add that to the list.
• 6. Conduct or participate in Team discussion/meetings.
• 7. Take a double look at the checklist, if you are maintaining any, and ensure that you are following it.
• 8. Also, ensure that you have good test coverage. Besides, your tests cover positive as well as negative scenarios based upon the requirements. Sometimes, testing edge scenarios prevent such situations.
• 9. You should test a scenario from an end-user perspective.
• 10. Make sure you communicate well with the developer about all your defects. Keep them informed. Keep it documented in the defect management tool.

Conclusion

I hope, my experience will be useful to you. Let’s try to give our best in whatever we do each day in our careers. Thank you for reading!

 

About Author

As a tester in a team,will you raise only critical/blocker issues or will you raise all defects which comes across your way while testing a particular application?

Well, as per my understanding, we should never underestimate a defect in terms of complexity or criticality or infact how big or small a defect is. We should document( in test/Defect management tool) all the defects whether it is of small priority or P1.

Having said that,P1defects needs immediate attention and should be fixed at the earliest as this may impact the business to a large extent. But,in all the situations,as a tester,you must raise alert or raise defects if some functionality is not working.

That’s all…Somebody asked me whether he should raise only critical defects or all,so now you know the answer.

Please feel free to share your experience on the same. Do you raise only critical defects or all of them irrespective of the priority or severity. Thank you for reading!