In software testing, many a times testers gets confused and have queries with the different states of the bug and their importance in the Bug life cycle. Hence to clear the doubt, we will be discussing what a bug is, different states of a bug, their sequence and importance.
Basically, A bug is a condition which fails to meet the software requirement. From discovery to resolution, a bug moves through a definite cycle and this journey is called a Bug life cycle.This begins the moment the bug is identified and it lasts till the bug gets fixed after testing it thoroughly thereby ensuring that it doesn’t get reproduced again.
Let us now talk about various states that a bug in general can go through-

• NEW – When the bug is identified and is reported for the first time in the test management tool with all the details for eg- steps to reproduce,screenshots,affected browser etc. In this state the bug is yet to be Assigned/Dropped or to be Deferred depending upon the severity.
• ASSIGNED – After the bug is raised, the QA lead will triage and assign the bug to the development team or person. The Developer should start the analysis of the bug in this state.
• OPEN – In this state, the developer starts to work on the fix for the bug reported.
• FIXED – The developer marks the state as Fixed, when he has provided the fix for the issue and also has verified the changes on his/her end.
• PENDING RETEST – When the bug is fixed by the developer, it is assigned to the tester for re-testing.Since the testing remains pending from the testers end, the status assigned is pending request.
• RETEST – In this state, the tester does the retesting of the fix provided to verify whether the fix provided is a success or not.
• REOPENED – This state is marked if the bug persists in the system.The tester assigns the bug back to the developer and the bug will go the through the cycle again.
• VERIFIED – If the bug is not identified anymore in the system and it meets the expected condition, the tester changes the status to verified.
• CLOSED – When the bug is fixed and is no longer present in the system, the bug state is marked as Closed by testing team.
• DEFERRED – When the bug is identified to be of low priority or the bug can be avoided/ignored and it doesn’t hold much importance ,the developer team marks the bug as deferred to be considered/looked upon afterwards as required.
• REJECTED – When the bug is found to be invalid or not in the scope of the given requirements, it gets rejected by the developer team along with proper comments of rejecting reasons.
• DUPLICATE – When same bug is reported more than once for exactly same scenario/condition, one of the bug is marked as duplicate of another. It is a good practice to link or mention the duplicate bug ID while changing the status.
• NOT A BUG – When the bug is not affecting the functionality of the system as per the software requirement document, the bug is marked as “Not a Bug”. This can be taken up as an improvement or suggestion to be discussed with Product team.

DIAGRAMMATIC REPRESENTATION OF VARIOUS STATES OF A BUG LIFE CYCLE

POINTS TO PONDER-

• You must ensure that all the requirements are properly understood before raising the bugs.
• Enough details should be provided when the bug is reported likewise – bug description, steps to reproduce, actual and expected results, screenshots (if any), notes etc.
• Mark proper Priority and severity of the bug, this helps in identifying the impact of the bug on the system.
• Avoid duplication of bugs as this gets redundant and consumes time.
• Verify the Bug and related affected components and then close the bug.

In our next article we will discuss about how we decide priority and severity of a bug. Keep watching this space!

About the author

Sanah, has 6 years of experience in the field of software quality. She has worked with various MNC’s in this short span of time and has been awarded with various awards. She is ISTQB certified and is currently residing in Arizona. When she is not ensuring an application is release defect free she likes to cuddle up dogs at the puppies meet.