Defect Tracking and Triage
All defects that are found by the testers must be replicated, repaired, and verified. This means that many people must be able to see and reproduce the behavior that causes each defect. To do this, a defect report must be created for every defect found that includes:
A name and a unique number.
A priority (determined by the tester, but that may be modified later in defect triage).
A description of the defect. The description must include the steps required to replicate the defect, the actual behavior observed when the steps were followed, and the expected results of the steps.
When a tester discovers a defect, it should be entered into a defect tracking system, a database used for storing information about defects and routing them through a workflow of evaluation and repair. There are many defect tracking systems available, including commercial systems and ones that are free and open source. Many of the metrics used to measure the health of the product are gathered from the defect tracking system (see below). It is also useful when planning regression tests: testers use it to keep track of defects that were repaired, in order to verify that they were fixed before getting into the rest of the functional tests.
Once a defect is entered, the defect tracking system routes it between testers, developers, the project manager, and other people, following a workflow designed to ensure that the defect is verified and repaired. The specific workflow used to enter, ...