Although software and hardware defects can sometimes feel tragic to consumers, reporting and fixing them is common fare in the software production business. While software development is perceived as a precise endeavor, software bugs are common in almost every software program. Thus, software companies hire computer programmers both for their creative programming skill and for their critical problem solving skills. But for software companies to make use of these problem-solving skills, they have to employ a system for zeroing in on software defects, and the practice of doing this is known as defect management or bug tracking.
In the computer world, the terms tracking tools and bug tracking tools are used synonymously, and refer to databases where software testers and consumers can report a problem they encountered with a software program and the conditions under which the problem occurred. Superior defect tracking tools allow quality assurance personnel to chart the frequency, importance and the severity of the defects being reported. Another benefit of bug tracking software is that it allows developers to assign specific correction tasks to specific workers and allows developers to chart the progress of the problems through automatic status notifications.
Defecting tracking tools allow defects to be sorted by multiple criteria, such as code base sources, rate of appearance, difficulty of replication and severity concerning the functionality of the overall software program. This ability to variously classify software issues is especially helpful when it comes to checking for regression problems, such as when fixing a minor bug leads to the creation of a severe bug within a complex and interlinked coding project. It’s often said that it is impossible to create a bug free program upon first release, and this is the basic reason why. Having little to do with the time fame of a project or the effort of its developers, some bugs are simply considered too dangerous to fix in lieu of the larger problems that fixing them might cause.
While defecting tracking relies on the savvy of software developers and testers, it also relies heavily on consumer response to software bugs. In fact, because they occur within the context of real software use, consumer reports of bugs are often viewed as being more valuable than software tester reports. Producing a bug free software program would ultimately mean testing a program from every user angle possible, which is nearly impossible with complex programs.
When companies carry out their software development process based on sound defect management solutions, they almost always end up with a superior software product from a consumer perspective. From its first release through its subsequent releases, a software program sells the best when it contains the fewest number of bugs, and tracking software is the key to producing user-friendly programs.
Software Testing: Bug Life Cycle
