Bugs in Production: Causes and Solutions

November 17 14:22 2015 by Nataliia Vasylyna Print This Article

Even such a focused and attentive specialist as software tester is not immune to making a mistake. Testers may occasionally overlook a bug, and eventually it ends up in production.

Depending on severity and criticality of this bug, a software testing company may encounter slight problems or even suffer serious damage.

Why Can a Bug Be Missed and How to Avoid That?

Time resources allocated for functional testing or regression testing are never unlimited. When a tester realizes that estimated time is not enough to test thoroughly, he often becomes anxious and starts overlooking errors. If this happens, a tester should share his concerns with a project manager and ask for help of teammates.
Under tight time limits a manager may decide not to test the potentially low-risk product areas. It may go off well, but if it doesn’t, the harm may be substantial. In this situation, it is wise to hire an outsourcing software testing
If a tester works with the same software for a long time, he may miss bugs even in a prominent place. To avoid this harm, a manager should assign another person to bring fresh eyes to the software and look for missed defects.
A tester is not the one who decides whether a bug should or should not be fixed. A defect may be found but not fixed due to decision made by management team. To avert this, a tester should thoroughly report all found bugs and clearly explain their importance.

This list is not exhaustive, but it certainly can help to reduce the number of defects leaked to production.